Prohibition history
Prohibition in Alaska.
Alaska 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 1 speakeasies and hidden bars in Alaska.
Prohibition in Alaska, in order
| 1917–19 | Congress passes the 18th Amendment and sends it to the states. |
|---|---|
| 16 January 1919 | The amendment is ratified nationally. Alaska 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
Alaska 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.
Bone dry before the rest
Alaska was a territory rather than a state, and Congress applied prohibition to it by the Bone Dry Act, approved by territorial referendum in 1916 and in force from 1 January 1918 — two years ahead of the national ban.
Enforcement across a territory of that size, with that coastline, was a formality. Liquor came down from Canada and in from the sea, and the mining and fishing towns drank much as they had before. The territorial newspapers of the period are unusually candid about it, which is why Alaska shows up with a high hit count in our Chronicling America data despite its small population.
What Alaska’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 Alaska used the word “bootlegger” 3,838 times, “speakeasy” 292 times, “blind pig” 55 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 |
|---|---|---|
| October 18, 1920 | “bootlegger” | The Cordova daily times, Cordova |
| November 20, 1920 | “speakeasy” | The Alaska daily empire, Juneau |
| November 27, 1920 | “speakeasy” | The Alaska daily empire, Juneau |
| November 29, 1920 | “blind pig” | The Alaska daily empire, Juneau |
| March 18, 1921 | “blind pig” | The Alaska daily empire, Juneau |
| April 2, 1921 | “blind pig” | The Cordova daily times, Cordova |
| April 2, 1921 | “blind pig” | The Cordova daily times, Cordova |
| March 8, 1922 | “blind pig” | The Alaska daily empire, Juneau |
| January 5, 1923 | “speakeasy” | The Cordova daily times, Cordova |
| December 6, 1924 | “bootlegger” | The McCarthy weekly news, Mccarthy |
| March 11, 1925 | “blind pig” | Hyder weekly herald, Hyder |
| June 12, 1926 | “blind pig” | The Kusko times, Mcgrath |
Where to drink in Alaska now
We currently list 1 speakeasies and hidden bars in Alaska. The densest are College (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 Alaska 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 · Washington · Montana · Hawaii · Idaho · Wyoming.
The parts of the national story that bear most directly on Alaska: 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.