Rehab on the Range

A History of Addiction and Incarceration in the American West

Holly M. Karibo

• Publisher: University of Texas Press
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN: 9781477330340
• eBook ISBN: 9781477330364
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: Social Sciences

2025 Coral Horton Tullis Memorial Prize, Texas State Historical Association

The first study of the Fort Worth Narcotic Farm, an institution that played a critical role in fusing the War on Drugs, mass incarceration, and public health in the American West.

In 1929, the United States government approved two ground-breaking and controversial drug addiction treatment programs. At a time when fears about a supposed rise in drug use reached a fevered pitch, the emergence of the nation's first "narcotic farms" in Fort Worth, Texas, and Lexington, Kentucky, marked a watershed moment in the treatment of addiction. Rehab on the Range is the first in-depth history of the Fort Worth Narcotic Farm and its impacts on the American West. Throughout its operation from the 1930s to the 1970s, the institution was the only federally funded drug treatment center west of the Mississippi River. Designed to blend psychiatric treatment, physical rehabilitation, and vocational training, the Narcotic Farm, its proponents argued, would transform American treatment policies for the better. The reality was decidedly more complicated.

Holly M. Karibo tells the story of how this institution—once framed as revolutionary for addiction care—ultimately contributed to the turn towards incarceration as the solution to the nation's drug problem. Blending an intellectual history of addiction and imprisonment with a social history of addicts' experiences, Rehab on the Range provides a nuanced picture of the Narcotic Farm and its cultural impacts. In doing so, it offers crucial historical context that can help us better understand our current debates over addiction, drug policy, and the rise of mass incarceration.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Introduction
• 1. “A Beautiful Place of Fresh Air and Sunlight”?: Early Federal Drug Laws and Addiction Treatment in the West
• 2. “A Prison Is Not the Proper Place for These People”: Federal Incarceration and the Narcotic Farm Model
• 3. From Bald Prairies to Barbed Fences: Bringing the Narcotic Farm to Fruition
• 4. The Long Road to Texas: Re-creating Case Histories among Early Patients
• 5. A Troubled Home on the Range: The Narcotic Farm Model and the Postwar Environment
• 6. Relapse: The 1960s, Drug Policy, and the Death Knell of the Narcotic Farm Model
• Conclusion
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Index