12/05/2019
! On this day in 1933, the 21st amendment to the US Constitution was passed thus ending .
A controversial mile-stone in American history. The Woodman Lodge as well as the Snoqualmie Valley played a part in the production and distribution of the Hops industry during the Prohibition.
Very nice article by Don Meyers of Yakama Herald .
It Happened Here: Prohibition came to Washington before the rest of the nation.
Carrie Nation visited North Yakima in 1910, but she didn't wield her hatchet.▲
By Donald W. Meyers [email protected]
Jan 7, 2018
With countless acres of farmland devoted to producing hops and wine grapes, alcoholic beverages are a part of Yakima Valley’s culture.
Yet four years before the U.S. Constitution was amended to ban the making, shipping and selling of “intoxicating liquors,” Yakima County and the rest of Washington were already dry, thanks to a state law that foreshadowed Prohibition.
From its territorial days, there was tension between advocates of temperance and those who enjoyed making and drinking alcoholic beverages.
No sooner had the territory been organized in 1853, when Washington’s first temperance society was formed by the Rev. George Whitworth, a Presbyterian minister from Indiana who also founded what is today Whitworth University in Spokane.
But the first effort to enact an alcohol prohibition in the territory in 1855 failed in Congress.
In 1879, lawmakers banned liquor sales within a mile of the Northern Pacific Railroad, but only in Whitman, Spokane and Stevens counties, as an effort to protect railroad workers from saloonkeepers who might take advantage of them.
That prohibition did not include Yakima County, where the Northern Pacific’s arrival at what is now Union Gap was heralded with six barrels of whiskey that revelers drained shortly after their arrival. Present-day Yakima, which the railroad created in 1885 as the home of its depot in the Valley, boasted 15 saloons and a single church within four months of its founding.
In 1909, the Legislature gave communities the authority to license local saloons, similar to today’s rules on allowing cities to regulate ma*****na operations through zoning ordinances or business-�license rules. North Yakima remained wet. But the next year it got a visit from Carrie Nation, the zealous temperance advocate known for smashing saloons with a hatchet.
Nation spoke to 800 people at the Methodist Church in May 1910. Much to the relief of North Front Street’s saloon owners and the disappointment of the local reporters, Nation did not wield her hatchet while in town. She did, however, hand out miniature hatchets as souvenirs.
She urged people to push the Legislature to enact a full, statewide prohibition and not allow state lawmakers to continue “to take the stand of a coward” by leaving it to local authorities to determine if a community would bar alcohol sales.
“Your own town and your businessmen are damned as long as they support the saloon traffic,” Nation told the crowd.
It was in November 1914 when lawmakers again put prohibition on the state ballot, and it passed with 53 percent of the vote statewide and 58 percent in Yakima. The measure went into effect Jan. 1, 1916. The only liquor available was what those with import licenses could bring in — 2 quarts of hard liquor or 12 quarts of beer every 20 days. Medicinal alcohol was also allowed, which spurred an increase in drugstores around the state.
The 18th Amendment was ratified Jan. 13, 1919, and went into effect Jan. 17, 1920. And like in other parts of the country, people here flouted the law and Prohibition agents played cat-and-mouse game with bootleggers.
In one raid, agents found a still hidden in a henhouse next to a hog pen west of Toppen*sh. The odors of the henhouse and pigpen helped mask those of the makeshift distillery.
In another case, a woman charged with selling whiskey and beer to an undercover detective was acquitted by a local jury. Prosecutors dropped charges against her co-�defendants, fearing a similar verdict.
Prohibition initially threatened the hop industry because banks were reluctant to lend to hop farmers who lost their major market. While Prohibition dried up some of the commercial winemaking, there was a silver lining in that limited home-brewing and winemaking were legal, which kept up hop and grape sales while Prohibition was in effect.
Other hop growers branched out into �other crops to stay in business.
Some historians credit home winemaking with spurring the region’s wine industry when Prohibition was repealed, as people became accustomed to enjoying a glass of wine at home and, after making it themselves, came to appreciate the skills of professional vintners.
Prohibition was repealed in the end of 1933, when Utah became the 36th state to ratify the 21st Amendment.
But lifting Prohibition didn’t mean that alcohol flowed like water afterward. The state formed the Liquor Control Board, which limited the sale of wine and hard liquor to state-run liquor stores, restrictions that were not fully eased until 2011, �when voters passed an initiative privatizing liquor sales.
• It Happened Here is a weekly history column by Yakima Herald-Republic reporter Donald W. Meyers. Reach him at 509-577-7748 or [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/donaldwmeyers.
509-577-7748
[email protected]
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