In the 1920s, Prohibition may have been the law of the land, enforcing it in Susanville or in Lassen County—as in most other places was quite a different matter. There was, of course, that local authorities had no arresting powers—bootlegging was a federal offense. To compound matters the region was in an economic boom time, where in less than twenty years the population had tripled.
To understand just how widespread the problem with bootleg joints was, it was summed up by one observer in 1923. Using the nickname “Friendly George” he wrote: “This man’s town has become a beautiful city and as to bootleggers, I just over there a stranger on the Fourth of July. I asked a taxi driver to take me to one. Well, he said, I know 34 places but I don’t known ‘em all. Quite an improvement from four saloons. Yes, it is Prohibition, but hard to convince me it is Temperance.”
