Prohibition history
Prohibition in Delaware.
Delaware 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 3 speakeasies and hidden bars in Delaware.
Prohibition in Delaware, in order
| 1917–19 | Congress passes the 18th Amendment and sends it to the states. |
|---|---|
| 16 January 1919 | The amendment is ratified nationally. Delaware 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
Delaware 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.
A small state with a long shoreline
Delaware ratified the 18th Amendment and then had to police a coastline, a bay and a river with almost no resources. The Delaware Bay approaches were worked by the rum-running trade along with the rest of the mid-Atlantic coast, and the state’s position between Philadelphia and the sea made it a transit route more than a market.
Very little of Delaware’s 1920s press has been digitised into the Chronicling America archive, so the newspaper evidence on this page is thin. That is a gap in the archive rather than a finding about the state.
What Delaware’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 Delaware used the word “bootlegger” 1,149 times, “speakeasy” 80 times, “blind pig” 2 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 23, 1920 | “speakeasy” | Every evening, Wilmington daily commercial, Wilmington |
| January 24, 1920 | “speakeasy” | Evening journal, Wilmington |
| January 26, 1920 | “speakeasy” | Evening journal, Wilmington |
| January 27, 1920 | “speakeasy” | Evening journal, Wilmington |
| January 27, 1920 | “speakeasy” | Every evening, Wilmington daily commercial, Wilmington |
| January 29, 1920 | “speakeasy” | Evening journal, Wilmington |
| January 29, 1920 | “speakeasy” | Every evening, Wilmington daily commercial, Wilmington |
| January 29, 1921 | “bootlegger” | Middletown transcript, Middletown |
| January 6, 1922 | “bootlegger” | Every evening, Wilmington daily commercial, Wilmington |
| January 3, 1923 | “bootlegger” | Evening journal, Wilmington |
| November 21, 1924 | “bootlegger” | Milford chronicle, Milford |
| May 13, 1925 | “bootlegger” | Smyrna times, Smyrna |
Where to drink in Delaware now
We currently list 3 speakeasies and hidden bars in Delaware. The densest are Rehoboth Beach (1), Wilmington (1), Dover (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 Delaware
Listings cluster where the building stock and the licensing both allow it. These are the Delaware cities and towns with the most in the directory today.
| Rehoboth Beach | 1 listed |
|---|---|
| Wilmington | 1 listed |
| Dover | 1 listed |
Where this state fits
We group Delaware with the Mid-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: New York · Pennsylvania · New Jersey · District of Columbia · Maryland.
The parts of the national story that bear most directly on Delaware: 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.