By Kevin S. Giles

Ever heard of Zip to Zap? I hadn’t either until my chance discovery of black and white photographs revealed possibly one of the oddest National Guard deployments during our country’s legendary student unrest of 1969.

I was a Montanan working at the Bismarck Tribune in North Dakota when I found a fat brown envelope marked “Zip to Zap” in the newsroom library. (I had traded the Rocky Mountains for a prairie state where tourism billboards crowed, “Mountain removal project complete.”) The envelope contained two or three dozen print images, taken by Tribune photographers, of a rowdy beer bust involving as many as 3,000 college students. Zap, you see, was a farming village, hardly a blip on the North Dakota map, chosen for the marketing value of its name.

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The organizer of this event, in May 1969, billed it as the “Grand Festival of Light and Love.” It was an apt name considering how extensively the flames of a mighty bonfire the students built illuminated this dark town’s main drag. The student newspaper at North Dakota State University referred to Zap as “Fort Lauderdale of the North,” an apparent reference to the growing popularity of drunken student spring breaks on Florida beaches.

Nobody confused Florida with North Dakota. Sleeping off a hangover on beer can-littered frosty ground 80 miles south of the Canadian border brings certain bragging rights.

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The Zip to Zap photos I found showed a celebration that lasted until the beer ran out. Two young adults, a man and woman, passed out on the ground with their shoes embedded in the ashes of a campfire. Crowds packed into Zap’s two taverns. A band playing from a stage. The roaring bonfire fueled with lumber taken from a building being demolished. Armed National Guard troops who suddenly appeared to quell a “riot” the locals feared was already underway.

Zaps name had marketing potential. The town had few amenities.

Apparently, the town mayor, after initially welcoming the event, became worried after the taverns doubled the cost of beer to 50 cents. Some of the students reacted aggressively. In the end hard feelings over prices fell moot when the town ran out of beer.

Half of the students fled town by the time an estimated 500 guardsmen showed up. The guardsmen never fired a shot, but they drove the remaining students off Main Street at gunpoint. They did the same when the students moved their party to the neighboring cities of Beulah and Hazen. Finally, the students retreated to Bismarck, where they concluded their weekend in a city park.

No home invasions

I imagine that at the height of the raucous party, the 250 residents of Zap feared mayhem. Still, I found the Guard presence particularly curious given the absence of widespread damage. Many of the young people in the photos were barbered men who left the impression they hadn’t traveled far from North Dakota’s farms. Vomiting was reported up and down the street. So was urination. Yes, students wrecked one bar and apparently damaged the town cafe, but I’ve read no accounts of townspeople being assaulted or their homes invaded.

That’s not to excuse regrettable behavior. Admittedly I was a contributing member of party crowds when I was young. A year after Zip to Zap, I took part in the University of Montana’s first Aber Day celebration when beer flowed like water from a stream of 16-gallon kegs being unloaded off a semi-trailer. Unlike Zip to Zap, this commotion took place in a forest. The trip home involved a parade of inebriated students shouting their way through East Missoula from the beds of pickup trucks. Surely the residents didn’t mind, did they?

By the measure of any generation, wild beer drinking with like-minded youth seems like a gas — until it isn’t. Nobody was shot in Zap. Images of advancing rifles held by uniformed troops foreshadowed a later tragedy at Kent State University in Ohio when guardsman fired live rounds at unarmed students protesting the Vietnam War. The 13-second barrage killed four students and wounded nine. What happened at Kent State on May 4, 1970, ignited large student protests on college campuses across the country. One of those places was the University of Montana, considered by some observers to rival the University of California at Berkeley for student-led antiwar activism.

Oops, I missed Woodstock

I was in high school when Zip to Zap and Kent State happened. Still, they made an impression on me as did the Woodstock music festival in August 1969. My Grandma Velma, ever capable of surprises, informed me after Woodstock of her disappointment that I hadn’t taken her there. “But Grandma,” I protested, “I didn’t get my driver’s license until the month Woodstock was held.” To that she said, “Well, what stopped you?” But I didn’t own a car, I reminded her. “We could have gone in your dad’s Volkswagen, Kevin. Tell him you’re taking Grandma to Woodstock and grab the keys. All we had to do was hit the road.”

Oh, Grandma. Opportunity missed.

Early flash party?

Zip to Zap remains a fabled event in North Dakota history, both despised and cherished. One pundit, in fact, compared Zip to Zap to Woodstock. “One has to wonder if there wasn’t something in the air, some sense that the tribe ought to be gathered,” he said for a film commemorating Zip to Zap.

It’s doubtful anyone will remember Zip to Zap for its music, which probably was good. The gathering wasn’t about the Vietnam War, either. It was more of a precursor to today’s flash parties when people get word of what’s promised as a good time. When the NDSU Spectrum published its rallying cry for the “Grand Festival of Light and Love,” along with a map of Zap and information about its few businesses, it advised that “brawls, freakouts and arrests” should be anticipated. The Associated Press spread the word to its many regional news organizations. And so, in today’s parlance, Zip to Zap became a thing.

At least until a few years ago, Zip to Zap remained the only civil disturbance (if that’s what it was) that summoned the North Dakota National Guard.

Zip to Zap, an event of lore

Mind you, Zip to Zap occurred during a year when student unrest and racial tensions elsewhere in the nation involved National Guard units in far more perilous confrontations. That year, 1969, would be remembered for many headline-grabbing events. Somehow, a belligerent beer bust known as Zip to Zap found its way into the lore. The significant difference was that the North Dakota guardsmen didn’t kill anybody.

In recent years, Zap hosted “reunions” that attracted participants of the original Zip to Zap, including some of the long-ago college students and guardsmen. Newspapers reported that they swapped good-natured memories over, of course, beer.

I wish I had gone to Woodstock with Velma (who never drove) riding shotgun to witness the music. And to Zap, to witness history.

Not for the beer. Of course.

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Western Montana native Kevin S. Giles wrote the popular prison nonfiction work Jerry’s Riot, the coming-of-age novel Summer of the Black Chevy, and a biography of Montana congresswoman Jeannette Rankin, One Woman Against War, which is an expanded version of his earlier work, “Flight of the Dove.” His new novel, Headline: FIRE! is the third in the Red Maguire series. Masks, Mayhem and Murder is the second. The first is “Mystery of the Purple Roses.” More information is available at https://kevinsgiles.com.