Prohibition Continued in This WA Town – Until Recently

You can stroll into any Washington state restaurant or cafe and order a mixed drink, bottle of beer, or glass of wine.

That's if the establishment has a proper liquor license. 

One town in Washington hung tightly onto a 90-year prohibition-era ban on alcohol. If you owned a restaurant in this particular town, you were prohibited from selling any beer, wine, or liquor - until only a few years ago.

The small Pierce County town of Fircrest, Washington (located between Tacoma and University Place) had banned the sale of alcohol - until a vote of the people reversed this long-standing, archaic law in November of 2015.

When did Washington and America ban the sale or use of Alcohol? 

Washington voters passed an initiative that prohibited the Manufacture and sale of liquor across all of Washington in November of 1914.

(NOTE: The consumption of alcohol was legal until 1918 when Washington went completely dry.)

‘Even though the initiative failed in Seattle, Tacoma, and Spokane, it won statewide. City people opposed it whereas smalltown and rural people were in favor.’  -Historylink.org

Any saloons that had weathered the “Big City” Local Option closed as of midnight on December 31, 1915. 

The National Prohibition, prohibiting the sale of any alcohol, went into effect in 1919.

Effects of Prohibition on the Wine Industry

‘Washington's wine industry was one of the major outgrowths of the state's irrigation projects in the central and eastern areas of the state.  When Washington went bone-dry in 1917, the state's fledgling wine industry disintegrated almost overnight.’  -Historylink.org

 

The End of Prohibition

Prohibition in Washington officially ended in 1932.

The Nation, as a whole, dropped Prohibition in 1933.

Fircrest, Washington, a city with a population of 6,000, maintained its ban on alcohol sales until November 2015.