Prohibition history
Prohibition in Maryland.
Maryland 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 9 speakeasies and hidden bars in Maryland.
Prohibition in Maryland, in order
| 1917–19 | Congress passes the 18th Amendment and sends it to the states. |
|---|---|
| 16 January 1919 | The amendment is ratified nationally. Maryland 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
Maryland 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 Free State, which never passed an enforcement act
Maryland is the only state that never passed a state enforcement act at any point during Prohibition. The legislature simply declined, and federal agents worked the state without local assistance for fourteen years.
The nickname traces to Hamilton Owens of the Baltimore Evening Sun, who wrote a satirical editorial in 1923 proposing that Maryland secede rather than submit to Prohibition. H. L. Mencken, writing in the same paper, spent the decade as the most quotable wet polemicist in the country.
Baltimore drank. The Chesapeake gave the trade a shoreline with more inlets than anyone could watch, and the state’s refusal to help meant a federal force of a few dozen agents was responsible for all of it.
What Maryland’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 Maryland used the word “bootlegger” 969 times, “speakeasy” 58 times, “blind pig” 9 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 16, 1920 | “bootlegger” | Maryland independent, Port Tobacco |
| April 30, 1920 | “bootlegger” | Maryland independent, Port Tobacco |
| June 3, 1920 | “blind pig” | Evening capital and Maryland gazette, Annapolis |
| October 29, 1920 | “bootlegger” | The Democratic advocate, Westminster |
| January 28, 1921 | “speakeasy” | The midland journal, Rising Sun |
| August 4, 1921 | “bootlegger” | The Republican, Oakland |
| September 12, 1921 | “bootlegger” | Evening capital and Maryland gazette, Annapolis |
| January 21, 1922 | “bootlegger” | The daily banner, Cambridge |
| February 23, 1923 | “bootlegger” | The midland journal, Rising Sun |
| September 4, 1924 | “bootlegger” | The Republican, Oakland |
| June 18, 1925 | “bootlegger” | The Republican, Oakland |
| January 1, 1926 | “bootlegger” | The midland journal, Rising Sun |
Where to drink in Maryland now
We currently list 9 speakeasies and hidden bars in Maryland. The densest are Baltimore (3), Leonardtown (1), Frostburg (1), Savage (1), Glen Burnie (1), Fort Ritchie (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 Maryland
Listings cluster where the building stock and the licensing both allow it. These are the Maryland cities and towns with the most in the directory today.
| Baltimore | 3 listed |
|---|---|
| Leonardtown | 1 listed |
| Frostburg | 1 listed |
| Savage | 1 listed |
| Glen Burnie | 1 listed |
| Fort Ritchie | 1 listed |
The documented buildings in Maryland
1 of our Maryland 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.
| Le safari disco club | Public School No. 25, Baltimore · NRHP ref. 79001111 |
|---|
Where this state fits
We group Maryland 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 · Delaware.
The parts of the national story that bear most directly on Maryland: 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.