Prohibition history
Prohibition in California.
California 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 167 speakeasies and hidden bars in California.
Prohibition in California, in order
| 1917–19 | Congress passes the 18th Amendment and sends it to the states. |
|---|---|
| 16 January 1919 | The amendment is ratified nationally. California 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
California 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.
The grape bricks, and the wineries that stayed open
California’s Prohibition story is agricultural before it is anything else. Section 29 of the Volstead Act allowed a household two hundred gallons a year of non-intoxicating cider and fruit juice, and California’s growers answered the obvious question by shipping concentrated grape blocks nationwide, labelled with careful instructions about precisely which conditions would cause the product to ferment, so the purchaser could be sure to avoid them.
Grape acreage rose through the 1920s rather than collapsing. What was planted, though, was thick-skinned varieties that could survive a freight journey rather than anything that made good wine, and the state spent decades afterwards pulling them out.
A handful of wineries stayed open on the sacramental licence — Beaulieu in Napa is the best-documented, supplying the Catholic Church throughout — and emerged in 1933 with vines, equipment and trained staff when almost nobody else had any. That is why the California industry had any continuity at all.
What California’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 California used the word “bootlegger” 1,957 times, “speakeasy” 206 times, “blind pig” 21 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 |
|---|---|---|
| March 6, 1920 | “blind pig” | La prensa, Los Angeles |
| June 14, 1920 | “blind pig” | Imperial Valley press, El Centro |
| October 18, 1920 | “bootlegger” | Imperial Valley press, El Centro |
| November 5, 1920 | “blind pig” | Imperial Valley press, El Centro |
| December 21, 1920 | “blind pig” | Imperial Valley press, El Centro |
| March 31, 1921 | “bootlegger” | Imperial Valley press, El Centro |
| August 26, 1921 | “blind pig” | California eagle, Los Angeles |
| March 20, 1922 | “bootlegger” | Imperial Valley press, El Centro |
| January 26, 1923 | “bootlegger” | Süd California Deutsche zeitung, San Diego |
| July 2, 1924 | “blind pig” | Imperial Valley press, El Centro |
| July 18, 1925 | “bootlegger” | Imperial Valley press, El Centro |
| April 17, 1926 | “blind pig” | Imperial Valley press, El Centro |
Where to drink in California now
We currently list 167 speakeasies and hidden bars in California. The densest are Los Angeles (33), San Francisco (21), San Diego (9), Anaheim (5), San Jose (4), West Hollywood (3). 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 California
Listings cluster where the building stock and the licensing both allow it. These are the California cities and towns with the most in the directory today.
| Los Angeles | 33 listed |
|---|---|
| San Francisco | 21 listed |
| San Diego | 9 listed |
| Anaheim | 5 listed |
| San Jose | 4 listed |
| West Hollywood | 3 listed |
The documented buildings in California
10 of our California 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.
| Back Room Wines | First National Bank, Napa · NRHP ref. 92001277 |
|---|---|
| Back Room Wines | First National Bank, Napa · NRHP ref. 92001277 |
| Blue Room | Bank of Italy Building, Los Angeles · NRHP ref. 100004191 |
| Iron Door Saloon | Watts & Tannahill Company Store, Grass Valley · NRHP ref. 95000265 |
| Speakeasy | Bank of Eureka Building, Eureka · NRHP ref. 82002180 |
| Speakeasy | Bank of Eureka Building, Los Angeles · NRHP ref. 82002180 |
| Speakeasy | Bank of Eureka Building, Petaluma · NRHP ref. 82002180 |
| The Blind Rabbit | Anaheim Orange and Lemon Association Packing House, Anaheim · NRHP ref. 15000379 |
| The Edison | Higgins Building, Los Angeles · NRHP ref. 100009358 |
| Witherby Speakeasy | Independent Order of Odd Fellows Building, San Diego · NRHP ref. 78000751 |
Where this state fits
We group California 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: Colorado · Oregon · Washington · Montana · Hawaii · Idaho · Wyoming · Alaska.
The parts of the national story that bear most directly on California: Rum running and Rum Row · 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.