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

This book tells the little-known story of the origins of the US Border Patrol, starting during the final days of the Wild West on the US-Mexico border and tracing the origins of the modern federal agency as it came into its own during the violence of the Prohibition Era in the 1920s. Given today’s headlines, the Border Patrol is currently one of the most visible, and arguably controversial, agencies of the federal government. Few people, however, know the true story of how the Border Patrol came into existence. Spanning a little more than 50 years, from the Chinese Exclusion Act to the beginnings of the drug war on the border at the height of Prohibition, The Line Riders introduces the officers that guarded the international boundary when the West was still wild.