Prohibition history
Prohibition in Louisiana.
Louisiana had no statewide prohibition before 1920. The 18th Amendment, which the state ratified, closed its legal liquor trade on 17 January that year. Today we list 17 speakeasies and hidden bars in Louisiana.
Prohibition in Louisiana, in order
| 1917–19 | Congress passes the 18th Amendment and sends it to the states. |
|---|---|
| 16 January 1919 | The amendment is ratified nationally. Louisiana ratified it. |
| 17 January 1920 | National Prohibition begins. |
| 7 April 1933 | The Cullen–Harrison Act legalises 3.2% beer. |
| 5 December 1933 | The 21st Amendment repeals Prohibition. |
What Prohibition looked like here
Louisiana came to Prohibition late, with a legal liquor trade still running on the day the amendment took effect. States in that position lost a visible industry overnight — breweries, distilleries, saloons, the men who worked in them — and the resentment that followed shows up in how little local enforcement there was to speak of.
It also meant there was plant. Breweries that had made beer in 1919 could make it again in 1920 if anyone was willing to risk it, and a good deal of what the federal agents found in the first years was simply the old industry carrying on quietly.
New Orleans, which declined
Louisiana was among the last states to come to prohibition and the least interested in it. It never passed meaningful state enforcement legislation, and New Orleans operated with a candour that made the city a national embarrassment to the drys and a destination for everybody else.
The geography helped: a major port, the Gulf, the bayous, and a coastline that is mostly edge. Liquor came in from Cuba and the Caribbean and went out up the river. The federal agent in charge of the district said publicly that enforcement there was effectively impossible with the resources he had.
Several New Orleans rooms have genuine continuous histories through the period, which is rarer than the marketing suggests — and because the city barely pretended, the surviving documentation is unusually good.
What Louisiana’s own newspapers printed
The Library of Congress has digitised a large slice of the American press, and it is searchable. Between 1920 and 1933, papers published in Louisiana used the word “bootlegger” 299 times, “blind pig” 3 times. Every link below goes to the scanned page itself, free and in the public domain — you are reading the primary source, not our summary of it.
One caveat worth stating plainly: these counts measure what has been digitised as much as what happened. A state whose papers were scanned in bulk will out-score a state whose were not, and a low number here is evidence about an archive rather than about how dry anybody was.
| Date | Term | Newspaper |
|---|---|---|
| May 1, 1920 | “bootlegger” | St. Landry clarion, Opelousas |
| May 22, 1920 | “bootlegger” | The St. Charles herald, Hahnville |
| July 22, 1920 | “bootlegger” | Bogalusa enterprise and American, Bogalusa |
| September 4, 1920 | “blind pig” | The weekly Iberian, New Iberia |
| November 4, 1920 | “bootlegger” | Vernon Parish Democrat, Leesville |
| February 9, 1921 | “bootlegger” | The star-progress, Opelousas |
| February 12, 1921 | “bootlegger” | St. Landry clarion, Opelousas |
| February 9, 1922 | “blind pig” | Vernon Parish Democrat, Leesville |
Where to drink in Louisiana now
We currently list 17 speakeasies and hidden bars in Louisiana. The densest are New Orleans (5), Monroe (1), Metairie (1), Arabi (1), Baton Rouge (1), Jefferson (1). Those are present-day licensed bars — nothing on this site is illegal, and a modern hidden bar is a design decision rather than a legal necessity.
A handful of rooms in most states genuinely date to the period and can show it. Far more claim to. Where a venue’s page makes a historical claim, we label it Documented, Reported, Legend or Venue marketing, and we do not promote marketing into history because it makes a better paragraph.
Where they are in Louisiana
Listings cluster where the building stock and the licensing both allow it. These are the Louisiana cities and towns with the most in the directory today.
| New Orleans | 5 listed |
|---|---|
| Monroe | 1 listed |
| Metairie | 1 listed |
| Arabi | 1 listed |
| Baton Rouge | 1 listed |
| Jefferson | 1 listed |
The documented buildings in Louisiana
2 of our Louisiana listings sit on property recorded on the National Register of Historic Places. That is a federal nomination document with a reference number, written by somebody who had to show their working — a very different kind of evidence from a bar saying its building has a past.
It does not make the bar historic. It makes the building documented, which is the most we can honestly claim and more than most directories claim at all.
| The Secret Lounge & Nightclub | Vieux Carre Squares, Rouzan Residence, New Orleans · NRHP ref. 66000377 |
|---|---|
| The Tunnel | Heidelberg Hotel, Baton Rouge · NRHP ref. 82002769 |
Where this state fits
We group Louisiana with the Deep South for editorial purposes — regions tuned to drinking culture and Prohibition history rather than to Census divisions, because those are the lines that actually explain what happened. Its neighbours here: Tennessee · Kentucky · Alabama · Arkansas · Mississippi.
The parts of the national story that bear most directly on Louisiana: Rum running and Rum Row.
How to read these pages
Each state chronology sets the local dates against the national ones, because Prohibition was never one story. Thirty-three states had already banned liquor before the federal government did; two refused to ratify the amendment at all; and repeal in 1933 handed the question straight back to the states, which is why American liquor law is still fifty systems rather than one.
The newspaper evidence is drawn from Chronicling America, the Library of Congress’s archive of digitised American newspapers. It is public domain, it is free, and we link to the scanned page rather than quoting it, so you can check us.