Prohibition Movement
Posted by: 
YoSam.
N 37° 01.941 W 097° 36.368
14S E 623971 N 4099369
Wide open cow town had enough, by 1885 liquor was prohibited. Then the terror really began.
Waymark Code: WM985V
Location: Kansas, United States
Date Posted: 07/12/2010
Views: 6
Marker Erected by: The Caldwell Historical Society
Marker Sponsors: Donations from the Caldwell Cherokee Strip Centennial Committee
Date Marker Erected: 1993
County of Marker: Sumner County
Location of Marker: 23 E. Central Ave., Caldwell
Marker Text:
By 1885 a reform movement had begun in this wild cowtown. The open saloons were being forced underground into "blind tigers", a place where liquor could be bought through a slot in the door but neither the seller nor the buyer could see the other.
Accusations, threatening letters and bad feeling raced through the city. Enos Blair, a local editor and prohibitionist, had a mysterious fire at his home which everyone blamed on the saloon crowd. On this site, early on December 8, 1885, Frank Noyes, a blind tiger owner, was taken from his residence by vigilantes posing as law officers. Noyes was found the next morning from a crossbeam at the railroad yard one block east. A note on the body named others who should take warning from his untimely death.
Though several of the vigilantes were recognized when Noyes was first seized, none ever faced trial.