Prohibition history
Prohibition in Washington.
Washington went dry under its own law in 1916, 4 years ahead of the federal ban, and ratified the 18th Amendment with the rest of the country. Today we list 29 speakeasies and hidden bars in Washington.
Prohibition in Washington, in order
| 1916 | Statewide prohibition takes effect in Washington. |
|---|---|
| 1917–19 | Congress passes the 18th Amendment and sends it to the states. |
| 16 January 1919 | The amendment is ratified nationally. Washington 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
Washington went dry on its own account in 1916 and then voted for the national ban, which is the ordinary pattern: the 18th Amendment passed because most of the country had already decided the question. The practical effect of 1920 here was federal rather than legal — the same prohibition, now with agents, courts and padlock injunctions behind it.
What changed most was the supply. A dry state next to a wet one has a border problem. A dry country has a coastline, a Canadian frontier and an industrial-alcohol industry, and from 1920 those became the sources that mattered.
Roy Olmstead, and the wiretap that changed American privacy law
Washington went dry on 1 January 1916, four years ahead of the federal ban. Its most consequential bootlegger was Roy Olmstead, a Seattle police lieutenant who left the force to run the largest liquor operation in the Pacific Northwest — and who was known for not carrying weapons and not cutting his product.
Federal agents tapped his telephone lines from the street outside his property and built their case entirely on the transcripts. In Olmstead v. United States (1928) the Supreme Court held that wiretapping without physical entry was not a search under the Fourth Amendment, because nothing tangible had been seized.
Justice Brandeis dissented, arguing for a right “to be let alone” that the Constitution protected regardless of the technology involved. He lost. Forty years later his dissent became the majority position in Katz, and American privacy law as it now stands grew out of a Seattle bootlegging case.
What Washington’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 Washington used the word “bootlegger” 2,315 times, “blind pig” 47 times, “speakeasy” 32 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 |
|---|---|---|
| January 16, 1920 | “blind pig” | The Leavenworth echo, Leavenworth |
| January 23, 1920 | “blind pig” | The Seattle star, Seattle |
| August 3, 1920 | “bootlegger” | The Seattle star, Seattle |
| November 19, 1920 | “bootlegger” | The Seattle star, Seattle |
| January 7, 1921 | “blind pig” | The Seattle star, Seattle |
| January 31, 1921 | “blind pig” | The Seattle star, Seattle |
| April 26, 1921 | “bootlegger” | The Seattle star, Seattle |
| January 10, 1922 | “bootlegger” | The Seattle star, Seattle |
| February 26, 1923 | “blind pig” | The Seattle star, Seattle |
| February 20, 1924 | “bootlegger” | The Seattle star, Seattle |
| February 21, 1925 | “blind pig” | The Seattle star, Seattle |
| April 25, 1929 | “speakeasy” | Vashon Island news-record, Vashon |
Where to drink in Washington now
We currently list 29 speakeasies and hidden bars in Washington. The densest are Seattle (12), Spokane (2), Olympia (2), Renton (1), Bremerton (1), Burlington (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 Washington
Listings cluster where the building stock and the licensing both allow it. These are the Washington cities and towns with the most in the directory today.
| Seattle | 12 listed |
|---|---|
| Spokane | 2 listed |
| Olympia | 2 listed |
| Renton | 1 listed |
| Bremerton | 1 listed |
| Burlington | 1 listed |
The documented buildings in Washington
4 of our Washington 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.
| Gilded Unicorn | Montvale Block, Spokane · NRHP ref. 98000369 |
|---|---|
| Roaring Underground | Trommald Building, Enumclaw · NRHP ref. 00000972 |
| Speakeasy Arts Cooperative | Rhodes Medical Arts Building, Tacoma · NRHP ref. 78002769 |
| The Observatory | Columbia Building, Spokane · NRHP ref. 100004960 |
Where this state fits
We group Washington with the West 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: California · Colorado · Oregon · Montana · Hawaii · Idaho · Wyoming · Alaska.
The parts of the national story that bear most directly on Washington: Blind pigs and blind tigers · Canadian whisky and the northern border · 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.