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Saint Pierre and Miquelon are France's only remaining territory in North America

Paris kept the islands in 1763 when it surrendered New France, and Prohibition later made them a legal staging point for liquor bound for the United States.

Saint Pierre and Miquelon lie south of Newfoundland in the North Atlantic, minutes by air from Canada yet governed as part of France. Residents speak French, use the euro, and carry French passports without leaving the continent.

The status traces to 1763, when France lost the Seven Years' War and gave up nearly all of New France. Britain took the continental lands but allowed France to retain Saint Pierre and Miquelon as a fishing station, without military fortifications.

When the United States banned alcohol in 1920, the archipelago could import spirits from Europe and transship them toward the mainland. The trade brought jobs and wealth, and island history still links the period to organized crime, including stories that local figure Mon Boisé met Al Capone. A museum on Saint-Pierre displays unopened Prohibition-era bottles residents kept at home.

On a recent visit documented by Yes Theory, a resident waiting for a ferry said the Capone visit was completely true. An elder on Île aux Marins recalled six or seven nightclubs when liquor money was flowing. Today the islands present as a small, quiet fishing community where strangers are greeted in the street and Prohibition-era crates still surface in local memory.

France chose Caribbean sugar colonies over its North American empire in 1763. Saint Pierre and Miquelon are what remained, and they still mark the end of that empire on the map of North America.

Source video: This piece of America is still owned by France?