The Lake Champlain Basin Program will host Susan Evans McClure, Executive Director of the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum as she presents Our Best Endeavors: Temperance and Prohibition in the Champlain Valley on Thursday, February 27, 2020.
“When you think about ‘Prohibition,’ most people imagine gangster and bootleggers with tommy guns and fancy cars in the 1920s,” said McClure. “But to truly understand federal Prohibition in the Champlain Valley, you have to start earlier than the ratification of the 18th Amendment in 1919. Vermont actually had statewide prohibition from 1853-1904!”
Susan Evans McClure will examine how the Champlain Valley went from being a major producer and consumer of alcohol in the early 1800s to a hotbed of temperance sentiment by the mid-19th century. What caused the members of the Westport Sons of Temperance to proclaim in 1853 that they would “use our best endeavors to procure and sustain a stringent prohibitory law”? And what can this all help us understand about the tension between regulation and personal freedom that plays out in our society today?
Prohibition, smuggling, and temperance will be the 2021 theme for the Champlain Valley National Heritage Partnership, a program managed by the Lake Champlain Basin Program. The Love the Lake program will be good introduction to the overall impact and breadth of prohibition and temperance in the Champlain Valley in the early 20th century.
LCBP’s Love the Lake speaker series features both natural and cultural heritage resource topics relevant to the Lake Champlain watershed. This FREE public program begins at 6:30 p.m. in the Lake Champlain Basin Program Office and Vermont Fish and Wildlife Training Facility, 54 West Shore Road, Grand Isle, Vermont, located just north of the Grand Isle ferry entrance. Homemade desserts will be served. For further information, contact the Lake Champlain Basin Program at the LCBP at (802) 372-3213 or (800) 468-5227 or visit www.lcbp.org.
The LCBP Love the Lake March Speaker Series programs:
Thursday, March 5 6:30-7:30 P.M.
Road Salt in Mirror Lake: How Does it Impact Lake Trout Habitat?
Brendan Wiltse, Ausable River Association
Thursday, March 12 6:30-7:30 P.M.
Gateway to the Lake: 10,000 Years at the Galick Archaeology Site
Matt Moriarty, Southern Champlain Historical Ecology Program