Prohibition history
Prohibition in Ohio.
Ohio 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 53 speakeasies and hidden bars in Ohio.
Prohibition in Ohio, in order
| 1917–19 | Congress passes the 18th Amendment and sends it to the states. |
|---|---|
| 16 January 1919 | The amendment is ratified nationally. Ohio 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
Ohio 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.
Where the League was founded, and where Remus worked
Both ends of the argument came out of Ohio. The Anti-Saloon League was founded at Oberlin in 1893 and ran its national print operation out of Westerville, which produced tracts and voting records by the tonne and is still where the League’s archive sits. The Woman’s Crusade of 1873, which produced the WCTU, began at Hillsboro.
And Cincinnati gave Prohibition its most inventive criminal. George Remus, a defence lawyer, read the medicinal-liquor provisions of the Volstead Act and bought both ends of them — distilleries for their federal permits, drug companies to buy from the distilleries — then had his own trucks hijacked in transit. Every step but the last was legal.
Cleveland and Toledo, meanwhile, sat on a lake with Canada on the far side, which gave northern Ohio a supply line that had nothing to do with permits at all.
What Ohio’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 Ohio used the word “bootlegger” 1,794 times, “speakeasy” 173 times, “blind pig” 115 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 |
|---|---|---|
| February 13, 1920 | “blind pig” | The toiler, Cleveland |
| December 31, 1920 | “blind pig” | The American issue, Westerville |
| June 17, 1921 | “blind pig” | The American issue, Westerville |
| November 4, 1921 | “speakeasy” | The American issue, Westerville |
| December 2, 1921 | “speakeasy” | The American issue, Westerville |
| January 26, 1923 | “blind pig” | The American issue, Westerville |
| January 26, 1923 | “bootlegger” | The American issue, Westerville |
| January 11, 1924 | “bootlegger” | The American issue, Westerville |
| January 9, 1925 | “bootlegger” | The American issue, Westerville |
| March 1, 1926 | “bootlegger” | The American issue, Westerville |
| March 1, 1927 | “bootlegger” | The American issue, Westerville |
| January 1, 1928 | “blind pig” | The American issue, Westerville |
Where to drink in Ohio now
We currently list 53 speakeasies and hidden bars in Ohio. The densest are Columbus (10), Cleveland (4), Cincinnati (3), Cleveland Heights (2), Canal Fulton (2), Akron (2). 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 Ohio
Listings cluster where the building stock and the licensing both allow it. These are the Ohio cities and towns with the most in the directory today.
| Columbus | 10 listed |
|---|---|
| Cleveland | 4 listed |
| Cincinnati | 3 listed |
| Cleveland Heights | 2 listed |
| Canal Fulton | 2 listed |
| Akron | 2 listed |
The documented buildings in Ohio
7 of our Ohio 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.
| Baxter's Speakeasy | Portage Hotel, Akron · NRHP ref. 80004611 |
|---|---|
| Blind Pig | Root and McBride-Bradley Building, Cleveland · NRHP ref. 80002978 |
| Bugsy's Speakeasy | First National Bank Building, Cleveland · NRHP ref. 79002719 |
| The Blind Pig | H. & S. Pogue Service Building, Cincinnati · NRHP ref. 100012608 |
| The Dungeon & La Bodega | Palace Theatre Building, Lorain · NRHP ref. 78002109 |
| The Secret Cellar | Franklin Hotel, Kent · NRHP ref. 12000802 |
| Volstead Bar | Bing's Hotel, Sandusky · NRHP ref. 82001378 |
Where this state fits
We group Ohio with the Midwest 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: Illinois · Wisconsin · Michigan · Indiana · Minnesota · Missouri · Iowa.
The parts of the national story that bear most directly on Ohio: Canadian whisky and the northern border · Near beer and the breweries that survived.
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.