Keokuk Falls: Seven Saloons and a Coffin Factory

Keokuk Falls was platted in eighteen ninety-one at the opening of the Sac and Fox Reservation in Pottawatomie County, and named for Chief Moses Keokuk of the Sac and Fox Nation. Its location on the edge of the Sac and Fox lands, directly abutting the dry Indian Territory to the east, turned out to be the key to everything.

Because Keokuk Falls sat in Oklahoma Territory, which had no prohibition, while the surrounding Indian Territory was legally dry, the town became one of the most notorious liquor stops in the region. At its peak it was said to have had distilleries, saloons, and even a coffin factory, which made a certain grim sense given the combination.

The post office opened in January of eighteen ninety-two. Statehood came in nineteen oh seven, and with it came statewide prohibition. Oklahoma joined the Union dry, and Keokuk Falls had nothing left to sell. The post office closed in nineteen eighteen. The town dissolved into grass. Today it is a ghost, remembered mainly as a footnote to the economic logic of frontier liquor law.