In "The City of EGF Illustrated",
it tells The New Acme Hotel was built in 1882,
and was located on the SW corner of Sibley St and Washington Ave.
In the June 1887 devastating storm, the barn was destroyed.
Damages estimated at $100.
Using a bit of logic, the hotel was built in 1882. This building looks a little well used, so maybe this photo was in the late 1890s or the early 1900s. It makes me wonder if any of my relatives are in this photo? The women on the balcony ... "residents" of the hotel?
EAST GRAND FORKS is located where the Red River of the North and the Red Lake River gently meet. Most cities and towns on the frontier experienced rapid early growth followed by a period of stagnation before they either died or entered relatively long periods of growth. East Grand Forks was different. It grew very slowly for the first few years. In 1889, North Dakota became a state, on July 1, 1890, Grand Forks went dry.
The city of East Grand Forks was just 9 years old, but it had a powerful allure of lawlessness. During the city's early days in the late 1800s and through the first few decades of the past century, the dusty frontier town across the Red River was booming with bootleg booze, loose women and illegal gambling. Here were places you could go and get served alcohol; and, of course, when you have alcohol, you probably get prostitution, too. A city doesn't really want to have a house of ill repute, but some of it just happened back then because of liquor. The city had up to 48 saloons at one time, and Ripley's Believe It Or Not in the 1930s reported a three-block area of downtown had the highest concentration of neon lights in the world.
Frank Duffy of the East Grand Forks Courier once wrote "The police are kept unusually busy looking after the peace and quiet of the city, and a number of arrests have been made as follows: Wm. Casey, drunk; Henry Lewis, very drunk; B. Holland, hilariously drunk; Albert Ross, vociferously drunk, and Samuel Brown, dead drunk. The prisoners in each case got the usual dose."
By 1933, the Minnesota Legislature approved the sale of 3.2 percent beer. April 28, 1933 was referred to as "New Beer's Eve." In one day, 100,000 bottles of beer were sold in East Grand Forks.
That's one interesting little city!
