At 717 Randolph Street, in Traverse City's old Slabtown neighborhood, there's a tavern that has been pouring since 1882. Sleder's Family Tavern is billed as Michigan's oldest continuously operating restaurant, and the original 21-foot mahogany bar is still in place. Vencil Sleder, a Bohemian immigrant wheelwright, built the place out of rejected sawmill slabs — which is how Slabtown got its name on the west side of town.
When Prohibition arrived, Sleder's didn't close. It changed its sign.
Michigan went dry on May 1, 1918 — nearly two years before the rest of the country — and saloons across the state survived by becoming soft-drink parlors, lunch counters, and billiard rooms. In the public record of the dry years, Sleder's legal identity is exactly that: "Sleder's Soft Drink Parlor," and its proprietor, Louis Sleder, is listed as a "soft drink dealer."
Then came September 1930.
The Raid
On September 11, 1930, the Traverse City Record-Eagle reported that Louis Sleder had been bound over to circuit court on liquor violations. Officers had hauled a truckload out of the space above the Randolph Street parlor: two stills, 50 gallons of mash, 231 pints of beer, and 6 quarts of moonshine.
Here's the part that tells you how Traverse City actually worked in 1930: the raid went around the local police. The county prosecutor authorized it himself. When the search warrants were ready, he phoned Sheriff Fred Johnson — but the sheriff was out, so the prosecutor called in the State Police instead. The local department learned about the raid on one of its own neighborhood institutions the same way everybody else did.
Sleder wasn't the only door knocked on in that operation. Glen Lutz, a butcher at 421 S. Union Street, was swept up the same day, and both men were bound over on $1,500 bonds. The surviving record goes quiet on Lutz after that night. It doesn't on Sleder.
The Sentence
What saved Louis Sleder was a clean record and a good name. He was charged with possession, not bootlegging, and fined $600. The judge's words were preserved in the coverage:
"Sleder, this is your first offense and you're charged with possession. As near as I can understand, you have always borne a good reputation, and though a still and some mash were found, I won't send you away."
Six hundred dollars was real money in 1930. But it wasn't prison, and it wasn't the end of the tavern.
The Legend — and the Paper Trail
If you know one story about Sleder's, it's probably the tea cups. In the tavern's own telling, Louie kept barrels of homemade "root beer" — bourbon and rye — and served it in tea cups, free of charge, to local law enforcement. A wonderful story, and Sleder's still tells it on its own website today.
Here's the honest bartender's footnote: that story comes from the tavern's own marketing. No newspaper, court record, or named officer from the era corroborates the tea-cup ritual. Owner Deb Cairns put it more carefully to the Northern Express in 2015: "They definitely continued to serve throughout the entire time, with the blessings of whoever needed to bless it."
And that much, the paper trail backs up. The stills were real. The mash was real. The blessings, apparently, were real too — right up until a prosecutor decided to make a phone call to the State Police instead of the sheriff.
Still Pouring
Legal beer returned to Traverse City on May 11, 1933 — Michigan had been the first state in the nation to ratify the 21st Amendment that April. Taverns that survived the dry years came back into the light, and most of them are gone now.
Sleder's is still standing at 717 Randolph Street, still pouring, behind the same mahogany bar. It's the rare Prohibition story you don't just have to read about.
You can go drink in it.
For readers stocking a home bar, shaker sets, muddlers, and full bar kits live at Barillio.
Sources: Traverse City Record-Eagle, Sept. 11, 1930, as reported in the Northern Express, "Booze Flowed Freely Through" (May 24, 2015); Traverse Area District Library, Grand Traverse Journal; Sleder's Family Tavern (sleders.com). The tea-cup "root beer" story is the tavern's own telling and is presented here as lore, not record.
