Both of my parents went to college at Washington State University in the late 1970s, and one of the things I learned from the stories they told is that Idaho at that time had a drinking age of 19. With that in mind, I heard that Moscow had plenty of bars and drinking establishments. Imagine my surprise upon moving here in 2021 when I noticed that Moscow’s remaining bars numbered seven.

This differed from what I heard about the town and its reputation from the 1970s. So, I got curious – how many bars has Moscow had in its past? And where did they all go?

I did not set out to track down every single drinking establishment, but one of the first hurdles in my search was to differentiate between classification terminology. There are a multitude of restaurants that catered to students with 1 a.m. or 2 a.m. closing times and happy hours.