The Deed Itself Said No Saloon
A Spokane land company wrote liquor prohibition into every lot in the new town of Irby, Washington — then quietly bought the surrounding countryside so nobody could open a bar next door.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Spokane — There is to be one town in the Inland Empire where not a saloon can exist and not a drop of liquor will be sold. It is to be a strictly moral town in every sense of the word, and the man who dares to open a saloon in Irby, for that is the name of the town in question, may find himself in a bad fix.
Babcock, Cornish Co., of this city, who own the townsite of Irby, and are founders of the little town on the Great Northern, about a hundred miles west of Spokane, have adopted a novel method in handling the townsite — something that, it is claimed, was never tried before in this region, and perhaps nowhere else. What the results will be the firm is waiting to see, but is willing to take the chance.
In every deed that is given for a town lot in Irby, and in every deed that is given for a tract of land adjoining the town, the purchaser finds a clause inserted to the effect that "this property is never to be used for the sale of intoxicating liquors or for carrying on a saloon business."
Irby is in the midst of a thick German settlement, but there is no beer hall in the town. To guard against the starting of a saloon near the town, the company has purchased all the land adjoining the town, and has platted it into five and ten acre lots, and the same clause is inserted in the deeds to these tracts.
Babcock, Cornish Co. are letting a contract for six miles of irrigation ditches and are pushing the work of building the town in every way possible.
“In every deed that is given for a town lot in Irby... the purchaser finds a clause inserted to the effect that "this property is never to be used for the sale of intoxicating liquors."”
Irby never grew into much; the Lincoln County townsite faded back into farmland. But the mechanism the founders invented — policing behaviour through the deed rather than the ordinance — became one of the most powerful tools in American land law, later used to keep out saloons, and far worse, whole categories of neighbours. Walla Walla's own plat books carry the fingerprints of the same idea.
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