Prohibition: America Tries To Go DryThis is a featured page

Seattle Municipal Archives Image: Police Department Dry Squad - Photograph 64762The Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution went into effect on January 16, 1920. It banned the sale, transportation, import and export of all intoxicating liquor through out the United States and all territories under the jurisdiction of the federal government. In Washington state the prohibition of the manufacture and sale of liquor began on January 1, 1916. Prohibition ended nationally and in Washington State in 1933.

Some key historical questions: Why was a constitutional amendment to ban liquor ratified in the United States? What economic and social conditions influenced the Establishment of Prohibition? How well did it work? Why was it repealed in 1933? How did affect law enforcement, organized crime, and the justice system? Why did the prohibition of liquor manufacture and sales begin four years earlier in Washington? How many other states banned liquor before nation-wide prohibition? What are bootleggers, speakeasies and moonshiners and what roles did they play in Prohibition? What did Washington and other states do to control the manufacture and sale of liquor after Prohibition? What are “blue laws?” How do efforts to stop the consumption of alcohol through Prohibition compare to our efforts to stop the consumption of other addictive substances?

Be sure to consider other possibilities for historical questions as you analyze and interpret this topic.

Primary Sources:
  • Ken Bale Oral History Collection
  • Bicentennial Oral/Aural History Project – Black-King
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    • BL-KNG 75 - 45em
    • BL-KNG 75 - 63em
  • Bicentennial Oral/Aural History Project – Filipino
    • FIL-KNG 75 - 32cm
  • Bicentennial Oral/Aural History Project –Kittitas County
    • KIT 75 - 5sa
    • KIT 75 - 23sa
      KIT 75 - 33sa
    • KIT 75 - 35sa
    • KIT 75 - 39sa
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    • KIT 75 - 68sa
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  • Governor Hart’s Papers
  • Governor Hay’s Papers
  • Governor Lister’s Papers
  • Governor Lister’s Scrapbooks
  • Governor McBride’s Papers
  • Liquor Control Board Files
  • Minutes of the Constitutional Convention on the Twenty-First Amendment
  • Photograph Collection
  • Prohibition Special Collection
  • Secret Service Records
  • State Supreme Court Case Files
















  • Chelan County Election Files
  • Chelan County Law Enforcement Files
  • Kittitas County Court Exhibits and Transcribed Testimony
  • Yakima County Sheriff Violations Files – Liquor Laws

  • Spokane County Prosecutor Case Files
  • Auburn Municipal Court Criminal Dockets
  • King County Liquor Search Dockets
  • Kitsap County Prosecutor-Prosecution and Issue Files
  • Kitsap County Auditor – Liquor Permit
  • Pierce County Sheriff – Dry Squad Record
  • City of Renton – Liquor Licenses


  • Thurston County Election Records
  • Island County Women’s Christian Temperance Union Records
  • Henry Rising Papers
  • Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, East Washington Chapter
  • Docket Record of Liquor Cases
  • Liquor Docket Indexes
  • Liquor Search Dockets
  • Skagit Women’s Temperance Union Scrapbook
  • Henry Brown Papers
  • Sheriff Matt Starwich Prohibition Photograph Collection
  • E. Raymond Attebery Papers
  • George F. Cotterill Papers
  • Lucy Gearhart Papers
  • John F. Miller Papers
  • Struve, Allen, Hughes and McMicken Law Firm Records
  • Temperance Society of Swedish-Finns, Mt. Tacoma Records
  • Carrie M. White Papers


  • Clarence D. Martin Papers
  • Austen Mires Papers
  • Frank and Marty Mullen Political Memorabelia Collecton
  • J. Orin Oliphant Papers
  • William P Winans Papers

  • Puyallup Women’s Christian Temperance Union Records
  • Thurston County Women’s Christian Temperance Union Records
  • Autobiography of Edward B. Sutton
  • The American Issue: journal of the Anti-Saloon League of Washington, 1908-1910
  • The Echo: A Temperance Association Journal, 1868-1877
  • Proceedings of the Grand Lodge, Independent Order of Good Templars, of Washington Territory and British Columbia, 1870-1877
  • The Anti-Saloon League Year Book, 1909-1913
  • Promotional materials from temperance and prohibition campaigners, including rallying songs, and texts
  • "The Temperance Reform and Its Great Reformers: An Illustrated History" (1878)





Secondary Sources:
Seattle, 1900-1920: From Boom Town, Urban Turbulance, To Restoration by Richard C. Berner
Seattle, 1921-1940: From Boom to Bust by Richard C. Berner
The Dry Years: Prohibition and Social Change in Washington by Norman Clark
Washington: A Centennial History by Robert E. Ficken and Charles LeWarne
The Pacific Northwest: An Interpretive History by Carlos Schwantes


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