Prohibition history
Prohibition in Wyoming.
Wyoming 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 2 speakeasies and hidden bars in Wyoming.
Prohibition in Wyoming, in order
| 1917–19 | Congress passes the 18th Amendment and sends it to the states. |
|---|---|
| 16 January 1919 | The amendment is ratified nationally. Wyoming 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
Wyoming 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.
Dry from 1919, and almost nobody to police it
Wyoming adopted statewide prohibition on 1 July 1919, six months before the federal ban. It is the least populated state in the country and was more so then, which made enforcement a question of whether anyone happened to be looking.
The railroad towns drank, the ranch country distilled, and liquor moved along the Union Pacific line and down from Montana. The state repealed its own enforcement act in 1935.
What Wyoming’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 Wyoming used the word “bootlegger” 3,148 times, “blind pig” 25 times, “speakeasy” 12 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 9, 1920 | “blind pig” | Casper daily tribune, Casper |
| January 29, 1920 | “blind pig” | The Crook County monitor, Sundance |
| March 19, 1920 | “speakeasy” | The Thermopolis independent, Thermopolis |
| March 19, 1920 | “blind pig” | The Lusk herald and the Van Tassell pioneer, Lusk |
| March 20, 1920 | “blind pig” | Casper daily tribune, Casper |
| March 24, 1920 | “blind pig” | The Northern Wyoming herald, Cody |
| April 2, 1920 | “blind pig” | The Laramie Republican, Laramie |
| January 13, 1921 | “blind pig” | Pinedale roundup, Pinedale |
| February 1, 1922 | “bootlegger” | The Northern Wyoming herald, Cody |
| January 12, 1923 | “bootlegger” | Lander evening post, Lander |
| January 11, 1924 | “bootlegger” | The Kemmerer Republican, Kemmerer |
| May 26, 1925 | “blind pig” | Casper daily tribune, Casper |
Where to drink in Wyoming now
We currently list 2 speakeasies and hidden bars in Wyoming. The densest are Worland (1), Greybull (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 this state fits
We group Wyoming 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: California · Colorado · Oregon · Washington · Montana · Hawaii · Idaho · Alaska.
The parts of the national story that bear most directly on Wyoming: 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.