It Happened Here: Prohibition's repeal met with muted fanfare in Yakima - Yakima Herald-Republic

Eighty-seven years ago last Saturday, Prohibition ended nationally.

While one might have expected the repeal of the constitutional amendment that made America dry to have been a cause for celebration in a community that was a leading global producer of one of beer’s essential ingredients, the event was observed rather soberly.

There was no mad rush to go out and buy beer and liquor, and the police didn’t see anything out of the ordinary when it came to drunken and disorderly conduct, even though Washington state had — at least on paper — been drier longer than the rest of the country.

Rather than curtail alcohol consumption in America, Prohibition seemed to increase it, with alcohol being illegally made or imported, shipped by rumrunners with fast boats and cars. It also resulted in an increase in organized crime, as mobsters saw bootlegging and operating speakeasies as highly profitable enterprises.

The illegal use of alcohol led to a cat-and-mouse game between law enforcement and moonshiners. Near Toppenish, agents found a still hidden in a chicken coop, where the foul odors of the henhouse and nearby pigpen masked the aroma of the makeshift alcohol distillery.

And the battle of wits between enforcers and bootleggers took deadly turns here, although not on the scale that was seen in New York and Chicago. Ellensburg police Chief Alva Tucker was killed in a gun fight with moonshiner Johnny Emerson in 1927. Emerson was also killed, shot by Tucker and another Ellensburg officer in the fight.

Bertholomes “Bert” Pellegrini was running an illegal still under his Falcon Pool and Dance Hall in the Kitititas County mining town of Ronald when a vat containing 250 gallons of alcohol exploded, starting a fire that destroyed 32 homes and most of Ronald’s business district.

Pellegrini was severely burned in the explosion and died at a hospital in Cle Elum, his last words reportedly being “I’ve got to get out that hundred gallons today.”

With little public support for Prohibition, and the country sinking into the depths of the Great Depression, Congress passed the 21st Amendment, which, for the first time, would repeal another constitutional amendment.

It secured the required two-thirds vote in Congress, and sent it off to the states for ratification, where three quarters of the state conventions had to approve it to become law.

Utah’s convention voted to ratify the amendment at 3:32 p.m. Mountain Standard Time Dec. 5, 1933, bringing the total number of states ratifying the amendment to 36, meeting the constitutional threshold at the time to pass it.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who pushed to repeal Prohibition, urged Americans to drink responsibly once the restrictions were lifted.

Utah’s vote came early enough in the day for Yakima’s evening paper, the Yakima Daily Republic, to get a small item on the front page announcing the vote, while the Yakima Morning Herald had to break the news the next day. There was also a small story on the Republic’s front page about how the local speakeasies, who were anticipating passage, were planning to be open without requiring a password to get in.

One proprietor said he planned to sell whiskey at a quarter a shot — about $5 in today’s money.

Both the Republic and the Yakima Morning Herald noted that the first night without prohibition was relatively quiet, even though places that had sold beer before were now selling harder liquor without licenses, as city officials took a wait-and-see approach to how things would play out.

Police noted that they didn’t arrest any drunken people that first night, with the only sign of a celebration being a truck load of men and women cruising Yakima Avenue.

“John Public apparently does not care to drink much liquor now that it is legal,” the Republic’s article opined.

The area’s hop industry weathered Prohibition by diversifying into other products as well as marketing hops to home brewers, who were legally allowed to make beer for personal consumption under the law.

But Prohibition’s repeal didn’t exactly mean that liquor was flowing like water. The state implemented a system of liquor stores that was not repealed until 2011, and bars and liquor stores could not remain open on Sundays until after the state’s “Blue Laws” were repealed in 1966.

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It Happened Here: Prohibition's repeal met with muted fanfare in Yakima - Yakima Herald-Republic
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