Prohibition history
Prohibition in Indiana.
Indiana went dry under its own law in 1918, 2 years ahead of the federal ban, and ratified the 18th Amendment with the rest of the country. Today we list 25 speakeasies and hidden bars in Indiana.
Prohibition in Indiana, in order
| 1918 | Statewide prohibition takes effect in Indiana. |
|---|---|
| 1917–19 | Congress passes the 18th Amendment and sends it to the states. |
| 16 January 1919 | The amendment is ratified nationally. Indiana 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
Indiana went dry on its own account in 1918 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.
The Klan decade
Indiana’s Prohibition years cannot be told without the Ku Klux Klan, which by the mid-1920s controlled a substantial share of the state’s politics and made Prohibition enforcement one of its signature causes — conducting its own raids, supplying informers, and backing candidates on it.
That ended in 1925, when D. C. Stephenson, the Grand Dragon of the Indiana Klan, was convicted of second-degree murder in a case whose details destroyed the organisation’s moral standing in the state within months. The political collapse that followed took much of the dry coalition with it.
Indiana also returns the second-highest newspaper hit count in our Chronicling America data, behind only the District of Columbia — a figure that reflects both an unusually well-digitised press and a decade in which this was the state’s central political argument.
What Indiana’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 Indiana used the word “bootlegger” 10,775 times, “speakeasy” 1,674 times, “blind pig” 202 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 |
|---|---|---|
| July 15, 1920 | “blind pig” | The Lake County times, Hammond |
| December 16, 1921 | “blind pig” | The Lake County times, Hammond |
| June 9, 1922 | “blind pig” | The Lake County times, Hammond |
| January 11, 1924 | “blind pig” | South Bend news-times, South Bend |
| April 5, 1924 | “blind pig” | South Bend news-times, South Bend |
| March 28, 1925 | “bootlegger” | South Bend news-times, South Bend |
| August 30, 1925 | “bootlegger” | South Bend news-times, South Bend |
| January 24, 1926 | “bootlegger” | South Bend news-times, South Bend |
| January 26, 1927 | “bootlegger” | South Bend news-times, South Bend |
| November 11, 1928 | “speakeasy” | South Bend news-times, South Bend |
| January 31, 1929 | “bootlegger” | South Bend news-times, South Bend |
| January 9, 1930 | “blind pig” | South Bend news-times, South Bend |
Where to drink in Indiana now
We currently list 25 speakeasies and hidden bars in Indiana. The densest are Indianapolis (6), Beech Grove (1), Lagro (1), Madison (1), Oldenburg (1), Valparaiso (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 Indiana
Listings cluster where the building stock and the licensing both allow it. These are the Indiana cities and towns with the most in the directory today.
| Indianapolis | 6 listed |
|---|---|
| Beech Grove | 1 listed |
| Lagro | 1 listed |
| Madison | 1 listed |
| Oldenburg | 1 listed |
| Valparaiso | 1 listed |
The documented buildings in Indiana
3 of our Indiana 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.
| Blind Tiger | Vienna, Indianapolis · NRHP ref. 83000087 |
|---|---|
| Blind Tiger | Vienna, Fort Wayne · NRHP ref. 83000087 |
| Speakeasy Books and More | Hendricks County Jail and Sheriff's Residence, Danville · NRHP ref. 83000125 |
Where this state fits
We group Indiana with the Midwest 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: Illinois · Ohio · Wisconsin · Michigan · Minnesota · Missouri · Iowa.
The parts of the national story that bear most directly on Indiana: What people actually drank · How raids worked.
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.