The Line Riders: The Border Patrol, Prohibition, and the Liquor War on the Rio Grande

In January of 1920, the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution went into effect and the sale and manufacture of intoxicating spirits was outlawed. America had officially gone “dry.” For the next thirteen years, bootleggers and big city gangsters satisfied the country’s thirst with moonshine and contraband alcohol.

On the US-Mexico border, a steady stream of black market booze flowed across the Rio Grande. Tasked with combating the liquor trade in the borderlands of the Ameri...