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By Bill Reynolds
La Conner Community News

For his first book, Shelter Bay author Doug Vandegraft tapped into a topic that quickly appealed to the tastes of readers and publishers alike.

Vandegraft has gained a wide following for “A Guide to the Notorious Bars of Alaska,” which several firms vied to publish before a loyal, growing readership pushed it into a third edition.

Vandegraft shared what inspired his ambitious guide with a large audience at La Conner Swinomish Library on Oct. 22. The book highlights Alaska’s unique history and the roles — both celebratory and tragic — that bars and saloons have played throughout the evolution of America’s last frontier.

La Conner travel consultant and writing instructor Teri Goldstein coordinated Vandegraft’s hourlong presentation.

“Doug’s book is already in its third edition. That’s quite a feat in my neck of the woods, coming from the publishing world,” Goldstein said.

Vandegraft was 24 and a freshly minted graduate of Northern Arizona University when he moved in 1983 to Alaska to work as a cartographer with the Bureau of Land Management. He was immediately struck by how Alaskans and the state’s tourists valued old bars as social gathering spots.

“I couldn’t believe how many bars there were in Anchorage,” Vandegraft recalled, “and how they stayed open until five in the morning and opened up again at six.

“Someone has to write a book about this,” he said he thought at the time.

That someone was Vandegraft himself.

His research, conducted both in person and by poring through volumes at the National Archives and Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., revealed the social and historical impacts of Alaska’s bars.

“Alaska is unique in so many ways,” Vandegraft reflected. “There’s always been a tremendous need to socialize during those long winter months.”

Vandegraft said that before the advent of television, the internet and other new technologies, people “went to the bars to find out the news.”

Alaskans would also get their paychecks cashed at bars. Some even doubled as churches on Sunday morning after serving drinks through Saturday night.

“You have to realize that in some of these remote places the bar was the best building in town. These bars became multipurpose buildings,” Vandegraft said.

In the book, Vandegraft documents the histories of over 130 Alaskan bars. All have been in continuous existence for at least a quarter century, many for much longer.

Vandegraft noted how alcohol was illegal in Alaska from its purchase by the U.S. from Russia in 1867 to the Klondike Gold Rush era of the late 1890s. Bars still flourished, though, because enforcing alcohol bans was nigh on impossible given the territory’s remote nature.

The Gold Rush ushered in a nearly two-decade period of legal alcohol sales in Alaska. Bars opened en masse, including one in Nome co-owned by famed western lawman Wyatt Earp and his common-law wife, Josephine, to serve the miners who had headed north in search of riches.

“The Earps mined the miners,” Vandegraft quipped.

The Gold Rush and allure of quick wealth brought thousands of people to Alaska in the 1890s, despite its harsh winters and isolated locales.

“Alaska was like going to the moon in those days,” Vandegraft said.

Still, social and political movements in the Lower 48 took hold in Alaska during the early 20th century. A growing temperance campaign led to Prohibition. But when the 18th Amendment was repealed after nearly 15 years, new bars sprang up across Alaska.

The famed Imperial Bar in Juneau, Vandegraft said, secured a license to operate less than two weeks after Prohibition was lifted.

The Imperial is among the landmark bars Vandegraft chronicles in his lively account. During his appearance at the local library, which included a book signing, he also offered vignettes from the book about other iconic Alaskan watering holes. Among those are the Red Dog Saloon, Chilkoot Charlie’s, The Board of Trade, and the Alaskan Hotel & Bar, whose famous sign is mounted upside down supposedly so it can be read by patrons who pass out on the sidewalk below.

“A Guide to the Notorious Bars of Alaska” was 14 years in the making. Even so, Vandegraft wasn’t able to visit all the bars he featured in the book.

“Some bars that are so remote,” he conceded, “I just couldn’t get to them.”

Building upon the success of his Alaskan guide, Vandegraft said his next book projects are closer to home. He plans to write about the notorious bars of both Seattle and the rest of Washington state.

“I’ve already got a start on it,” he said.

Many of his fans will surely drink to that.

Bill Reynolds is a general assignment reporter for La Conner Community News.