Prohibition history
Prohibition in West Virginia.
West Virginia went dry under its own law in 1914, 6 years ahead of the federal ban, and ratified the 18th Amendment with the rest of the country. Today we list 2 speakeasies and hidden bars in West Virginia.
Prohibition in West Virginia, in order
| 1914 | Statewide prohibition takes effect in West Virginia. |
|---|---|
| 1917–19 | Congress passes the 18th Amendment and sends it to the states. |
| 16 January 1919 | The amendment is ratified nationally. West Virginia 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
West Virginia went dry on its own account in 1914 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.
Dry from 1914, and the mountain trade
West Virginia adopted statewide prohibition on 1 July 1914, nearly six years ahead of the federal ban. The state is mountainous, its coal towns had hard-drinking populations, and its hollows had been distilling without paying tax for well over a century.
What 1920 added was a market. The cities of the Ohio valley and the mid-Atlantic were within a night’s drive, and West Virginia product went to all of them.
What West Virginia’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 West Virginia used the word “bootlegger” 1,825 times, “speakeasy” 95 times, “blind pig” 17 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 |
|---|---|---|
| April 28, 1920 | “speakeasy” | The West Virginian, Fairmont |
| May 8, 1920 | “speakeasy” | The Wheeling intelligencer, Wheeling |
| September 30, 1920 | “speakeasy” | Belington progressive, Belington |
| November 26, 1920 | “speakeasy” | The Wheeling intelligencer, Wheeling |
| March 31, 1921 | “blind pig” | The Moorefield examiner, Moorefield |
| April 20, 1921 | “blind pig” | The Wheeling intelligencer, Wheeling |
| April 28, 1921 | “bootlegger” | The Moorefield examiner, Moorefield |
| April 17, 1922 | “speakeasy” | The Wheeling intelligencer, Wheeling |
| January 9, 1923 | “bootlegger” | The Elkins inter-mountain, Elkins |
| January 18, 1924 | “speakeasy” | The Elkins inter-mountain, Elkins |
| March 7, 1925 | “blind pig” | The Elkins inter-mountain, Elkins |
| July 8, 1926 | “speakeasy” | Randolph enterprise, Beverly |
Where to drink in West Virginia now
We currently list 2 speakeasies and hidden bars in West Virginia. The densest are Terra Alta (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 this state fits
We group West Virginia with the South Atlantic 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: Florida · North Carolina · Georgia · Virginia · South Carolina.
The parts of the national story that bear most directly on West Virginia: Blind pigs and blind tigers · Moonshine and backwoods stills.
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.