Prohibition history
Prohibition in Florida.
Florida went dry under its own law in 1919, 1 years ahead of the federal ban, and ratified the 18th Amendment with the rest of the country. Today we list 100 speakeasies and hidden bars in Florida.
Prohibition in Florida, in order
| 1919 | Statewide prohibition takes effect in Florida. |
|---|---|
| 1917–19 | Congress passes the 18th Amendment and sends it to the states. |
| 16 January 1919 | The amendment is ratified nationally. Florida 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
Florida went dry on its own account in 1919 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.
Bimini, the Keys, and the real McCoy
Florida had voted itself dry in 1918, and then discovered it was ninety miles from the Bahamas and Cuba. Nassau rebuilt its harbour on the transshipment trade; Bimini, fifty miles off Miami, existed almost entirely for it; and the Keys, the Gulf coast and the inland waterways gave the traffic more landing points than any agency could watch.
Bill McCoy, a Florida boatbuilder, is credited with inventing the anchored-offshore model that became Rum Row, running Scotch and rye from the Bahamas aboard the schooner Arethusa. He is said to have refused to cut his liquor, which is where the phrase “the real McCoy” supposedly comes from — an etymology that is almost certainly wrong, since versions of the phrase appear in Scotland decades earlier, and a very good illustration of how Prohibition folklore works.
The 1920s land boom and the liquor trade arrived together and reinforced each other. A good deal of what Miami became was built in that decade, with that money.
What Florida’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 Florida used the word “bootlegger” 1,033 times, “speakeasy” 41 times, “blind pig” 4 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 19, 1920 | “speakeasy” | The Pensacola journal, Pensacola |
| June 6, 1920 | “bootlegger” | The Pensacola journal, Pensacola |
| August 4, 1920 | “speakeasy” | The Ocala evening star, Ocala |
| August 10, 1920 | “speakeasy” | The Lakeland evening telegram, Lakeland |
| February 28, 1921 | “blind pig” | The Pensacola journal, Pensacola |
| July 26, 1921 | “bootlegger” | The Pensacola journal, Pensacola |
| August 19, 1921 | “bootlegger” | The Ocala evening star, Ocala |
| March 17, 1922 | “bootlegger” | Nassau County leader, Fernandina |
| April 8, 1926 | “bootlegger” | The Key West citizen, Key West |
| November 17, 1927 | “bootlegger” | La gaceta, Tampa |
| June 11, 1928 | “bootlegger” | La gaceta, Tampa |
| February 21, 1929 | “speakeasy” | Gadsden County times, Quincy |
Where to drink in Florida now
We currently list 100 speakeasies and hidden bars in Florida. The densest are Tampa (14), Fort Lauderdale (5), Delray Beach (4), Miami (4), Jacksonville (4), Clearwater (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 Florida
Listings cluster where the building stock and the licensing both allow it. These are the Florida cities and towns with the most in the directory today.
| Tampa | 14 listed |
|---|---|
| Fort Lauderdale | 5 listed |
| Delray Beach | 4 listed |
| Miami | 4 listed |
| Jacksonville | 4 listed |
| Clearwater | 3 listed |
The documented buildings in Florida
2 of our Florida 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.
| Phyre Steakhouse and Speakeasy | St. Cloud Depot, St. Cloud · NRHP ref. 100002728 |
|---|---|
| Thirsty Cobbler | Ocala Historic Commercial District, Ocala · NRHP ref. 99000656 |
Where this state fits
We group Florida 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: North Carolina · Georgia · Virginia · South Carolina · West Virginia.
The parts of the national story that bear most directly on Florida: 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.