Prohibition

Alcohol prohibition in Colorado (1916–33) was a Progressive Era experiment. It was based on reform-minded and religious ideas. Prohibition banned the sale and transport of alcohol. The goal of reformers was to reduce violence, drunkenness, and crime. However, outlawing alcohol created more issues than first thought.

Prohibition in Colorado predated national prohibition by four years. It ended only months before national prohibition was also repealed. The prohibition era in Colorado was marked by a sharp increase in organized crime, black markets, and government corruption.

Origins

During the Colorado Gold Rush of 1858–59, most mining camps and early towns used saloons as places for government and other official functions. Later, saloons served as locations for labor union meetings. They were also hot spots for gambling, boxing, and prostitution.

Because the rough-and-tumble saloon scene, Colorado soon saw a push for alcohol prohibition. Legal and moral arguments for the control of liquor existed as early as the mid-1860s, when Colorado was still a territory. Conscious of the region’s saloon culture, some towns were founded as dry. These included the communities of Greeley (Union Colony) and Longmont (Chicago-Colorado Colony) in the early 1870s. However, the idea of turning the entire state dry did not gain traction until the end of the century. A state law passed in 1889 outlawed the sale or delivery of alcohol to American Indians. Further efforts to ban alcohol in the state followed.

Building Support

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, reform-minded Progressives saw alcohol as the source of many problems. They believed that alcohol consumption led to labor unrest and moral failings. Reformers saw saloon culture as a product of urbanization and immigration. They hoped to keep Colorado free from what they called “un-American” activities. Several leaders of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) were also members of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). Their stance on banning alcohol was based on strong anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic feelings. They felt as if the state was being overrun by unskilled foreign laborers whose taste for drink made them dangerous.

Many of the antialcohol Progressives were also women with newly acquired voting rights. They were concerned with drinkers and gamblers who left their families poor. Colorado men opposed the 1877 referendum on women’s suffrage. Men were afraid women would vote for prohibition. By the time women gained the right to vote in 1893, many men had changed their stance. They had taken up the cause of prohibition. Prohibition was no longer a gendered issue but, rather, a unifying Progressive idea.

As a step toward full prohibition, antialcohol Progressives worked to make drinking a male-only activity staring in 1901. The idea was reinforced by strict Victorian ideas of womanhood. Progressives passed a law that kept women from entering saloons, working in areas that served alcohol, or buying alcohol. When saloon owners challenged the law, it was upheld by the state and federal Supreme Courts.

In 1907, cities could vote on whether to go dry. By 1909 Colorado Springs, Fort Collins, Aurora, and Greeley used this law to ban alcohol within a mile of their borders.

The biggest divide over alcohol was between rural towns and urban areas. The strongest antiprohibition counties included Denver, Teller, Mineral, La Plata, Ouray, Chaffee, Alamosa, and Garfield. All of these counties were home to major industrial centers, especially mining and smelting operations. They were also home to larger numbers of non-Protestants and higher numbers of immigrants than lived in the counties voting to go dry.

Prohibition Takes Effect

During the years leading up to prohibition, the WCTU, KKK, and Anti-Saloon League toured the state with their campaign. They spoke directly with lawmakers. The groups also publicly demanded the banning of any and all alcohol. By 1914 the WCTU gathered enough signatures to get a prohibition referendum on the ballot. Donations from industrial leaders such as John D. Rockefeller, Jr. aided their campaign. The culture of alcohol remained strong in Colorado, but there was not an organized campaign to keep it legal. Called Measure 2, the prohibition referendum passed on November 3 with 52 percent of the vote.

On January 1, 1916, statewide prohibition of alcohol went into effect. That was four years before the federal Volstead Act brought prohibition to the entire country. The Volstead Act used language similar to the Colorado prohibition referendum. For example, both defined “intoxicating liquor” as any beverage containing more than 0.5 percent alcohol. Both laws also banned the sale and transport of all alcohol, even for religious purposes. Thousands of breweries and saloons went out of business in Colorado. Many others scrambled to convert to soft drink parlors. By 1917 statewide prohibition had closed as many as 1,615 saloons and 17 breweries in the Denver area alone.

Enforcement and Corruption

Problems enforcing an alcohol ban became obvious within the first year of the law. Governor William Ellery Sweet appointed “dry agents” who broke civil liberty laws in order to enforce prohibition. Colorado also became home to corrupt law enforcement practices. For example, many soft drink parlors still sold alcohol. They gave free liquor to officers to stay in business. In addition, liquor taken in raids on speakeasies would disappear from police evidence rooms.

Members of the governor’s “purity squads,” as newspapers called them, had an uncertain legal status. These squads were often made up of men not formally trained as police officers. According to newspaper reports, they viewed themselves as “crusaders” seeking to destroy the “demon drink.” These moral enforcers would break down the doors of people’s houses without warrants. They would arrest anyone on the premises, with or without evidence that they had been drinking. Suspected drinkers or bootleggers were sometimes tied to chairs and beaten.

This activity prompted many complaints against the state’s Chief Prohibition Officer, John R. Smith, and his vigilante groups (often composed of members of the KKK). Smith was sued for violating civil liberties and using extreme force against the Italian American and Mexican American communities.

Progressive judge Benjamin Lindsey supported prohibition at first. However, he expressed frustration with how marginalized communities were targeted and given unfair trials. Lindsey was also upset that wealthy Coloradans didn't comply with dry laws. The well-off drinkers of Colorado worked with corrupt cops to ensure that they had as much liquor as they wanted. Newspapers reported police partying with rich people, often sipping on liquor seized from poorer communities.

Organized Crime

As a result of prohibition, Colorado saw the rapid growth of organized crime families in the 1920s and early 1930s. Notorious gangsters appeared all around Colorado. Joe Berry, Joe Roma, Joe Varra, and Sam and Pete Carlino made names for themselves through the bootleg liquor trade. Prohibition laws did not decrease the demand for alcohol, so the market for illegal booze skyrocketed. In 1924, during a series of prohibition sweeps in the Italian American community of Globeville, at least eighteen bootleggers were arrested in a week. More than half of them were women.

Opportunities for Women

Having been barred from the legal alcohol trade, women in Colorado took full advantage of new opportunities in black-market booze. They took part in drinking and creating alcohol.

Women held every sort of illegal job pertaining to booze during prohibition. They ran kitchen stills, sold booze, tallied sales records, and smuggled alcohol. When police were tipped off to moonshine stills, they often found women operating them from their kitchens.

Women also benefited from new chances in law enforcement. In the early 1920s, four women in Denver were appointed as deputy sheriffs to crack down on the alcohol trade. Throughout prohibition, several other police departments hired their first female officers. Edith Barker, a member of the WCTU, became Denver’s first accredited female police officer on May 2, 1920.

Repeal

By the late 1920s, Coloradans seemed as eager to end prohibition as they had been to start it. In 1926 Colorado became the first state to hold a referendum calling for the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment. The referendum failed. The Denver Post hosted its own “Rocky Mountain Referendum on Prohibition.” The newspaper printed ballots asking readers whether they were for or against prohibition. The consensus from 110,000 newspaper ballots was that Coloradans favored repeal. However, eligible voters still supported temperance.

After Colorado’s referendum, several states in New England began to call for repeal of prohibition. Soon several western states—including Arizona, New Mexico, and California—joined the call.

By 1928 more than 12,000 liquor-violation cases were filed in the Denver courts. Only half of them had been heard. The law had become a burden on the state’s executive and judicial branches.

In November 1932, Colorado voted on the repeal of prohibition again. This time, repeal received 67 percent of the vote. Starting April 7, 1933, beer with a maximum alcohol content of 3.2 percent by volume could be legally sold in the state. However, federal prohibition was still in effect nationwide. This loophole meant that beer could be bought and sold in Colorado, but it was illegal to travel with or ship it across state lines. Later that same year, the US Congress approved an amendment to end prohibition. By December 5, 1933, thirty-six states, including Colorado, had ratified the Twenty-first Amendment, repealing national prohibition.

According to the Rocky Mountain News, beer sales alone made the newly revived alcohol industry more than $200,000 (roughly $4 million today) on the first day of statewide repeal. Equipment builders, laborers, and railroads all benefited from the end of prohibition. The News guessed that in Denver alone, more than 1,000 retailers would be issued liquor licenses during April 1933.

As the industry revived, alcohol quickly became a part of the public lives of Coloradans again. Former Colorado breweries returned to beer production, including the Tivoli Brewing Company in Denver and Coors in Golden. They had relied on producing other products such as porcelain and nonalcoholic beverages until repeal. Meanwhile, mobsters who had profited from prohibition had the rug ripped out from under them. They were gone within a few months. The law no longer prevented women and American Indians from entering places that sold alcohol. The Twenty-first Amendment removed prohibitive laws that targeted groups of people.

Legacy

Since prohibition took legal hold on the state between 1916 and 1933, Colorado has reclaimed its saloon roots. As a state, Colorado currently has more than 400 established breweries. It is the top US state in microbreweries per capita. In 2019 Coloradans voted craft beer as their state’s most iconic drink. Colorado is also home to vibrant spirit industry, as well as a celebrated wine industry based in the Grand Valley.   

Prohibition in Colorado (1916–33) banned the sale and transport of alcohol. The goal was to reduce violence, drunkenness, and crime. The prohibition era in Colorado saw a sharp increase in organized crime and corruption.

Origins

During the Colorado Gold Rush of 1858–59, most mining camps and early towns used saloons as places for government and other official functions. Later, saloons served as locations for labor union meetings. They were also hot spots for gambling, boxing, and prostitution.

Because the rough-and-tumble saloon scene, Colorado saw a push for alcohol prohibition. Legal and moral arguments for the control of liquor existed as early as the mid-1860s. Some towns were founded as dry. These included Greeley (Union Colony) and Longmont (Chicago-Colorado Colony) in the early 1870s. The idea of turning the entire state dry did not gain traction until the end of the century. A state law passed in 1889 outlawed the sale or delivery of alcohol to American Indians. Further efforts to ban alcohol in the state followed.

Building Support

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, reform-minded Progressives saw alcohol as the source of many problems. They believed that alcohol consumption led to unrest and moral failings. Reformers saw saloon culture as a product of immigration. Several leaders of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) were also members of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). Their stance on banning alcohol was based on strong anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic feelings. They felt the state was being overrun by unskilled foreign laborers whose taste for drink made them dangerous.

Many of the antialcohol Progressives were also women with newly acquired voting rights. The women were concerned about drinkers and gamblers who left their families poor. Colorado men opposed the 1877 referendum on women’s suffrage. Men were afraid women would vote for prohibition. By the time women gained the right to vote in 1893, many men had changed their stance. They had taken up the cause of prohibition. Prohibition was no longer a gendered issue. It was a unifying Progressive idea.

Progressives worked to make drinking a male-only activity staring in 1901. The idea was reinforced by strict Victorian ideas of womanhood. Progressives passed a law that kept women from entering saloons or buying alcohol. When saloon owners challenged the law, it was upheld by the state and federal Supreme Courts.

In 1907, cities could vote on whether to go dry. By 1909 Colorado Springs, Fort Collins, Aurora, and Greeley used this law to ban alcohol within a mile of their borders.

The biggest divide over alcohol was between rural and urban areas. Denver, Teller, and Alamosa counties were against prohibition. All were home to major industrial centers. They were also home to higher numbers of immigrants than lived in the counties voting to go dry.

Prohibition Takes Effect

During the years leading up to prohibition, the WCTU, KKK, and Anti-Saloon League toured the state with their campaign. They spoke with lawmakers. The groups demanded a ban on all alcohol. By 1914 the WCTU gathered enough signatures to get a prohibition referendum on the ballot. Donations from industrial leaders such as John D. Rockefeller, Jr. helped their campaign. The culture of alcohol remained strong in Colorado. However, there was not an organized campaign to keep it legal. The prohibition referendum passed with 52 percent of the vote.

On January 1, 1916, statewide prohibition of alcohol went into effect. That was four years before the federal Volstead Act brought prohibition to the entire country. The Volstead Act used language similar to the Colorado prohibition referendum. Both laws banned the sale and transport of all alcohol. Thousands of breweries and saloons went out of business in Colorado. Many others scrambled to convert to soft drink parlors. By 1917 statewide prohibition had closed as many as 1,615 saloons and 17 breweries in the Denver area alone.

Enforcement and Corruption

Problems enforcing the alcohol ban started within the first year. The governor appointed “dry agents” who broke civil liberty laws to enforce prohibition. Many soft drink parlors still sold alcohol. They gave free liquor to police officers to stay in business. Liquor from speakeasies would disappear from police evidence rooms.

Members of the governor’s “purity squads,” as newspapers called them, had an uncertain legal status. These squads were made up of men not formally trained as police officers. They would break down the doors of people’s houses without warrants. Anyone at the home would be arrested, with or without evidence that they had been drinking. Suspected drinkers or bootleggers were sometimes tied to chairs and beaten.

This activity prompted many complaints against the state’s Chief Prohibition Officer, John R. Smith. Smith was sued for violating civil liberties and using extreme force.

Progressive judge Benjamin Lindsey supported prohibition at first. However, he expressed frustration with how certain communities were targeted. Lindsey was also upset that wealthy Coloradans didn't obey dry laws. The well-off drinkers of Colorado worked with corrupt cops to make sure they had liquor. Newspapers reported police partying with rich people while drinking liquor taken from poorer communities.

Organized Crime

Because of prohibition, Colorado saw the growth of organized crime families in the 1920s and early 1930s. Notorious gangsters emerged all around Colorado. Joe Berry, Joe Roma, Joe Varra, and Sam and Pete Carlino made names for themselves through the bootleg liquor trade. Prohibition laws did not decrease the demand for alcohol, so the market for illegal booze skyrocketed. In 1924, during a series of sweeps in the Italian American community of Globeville, at least eighteen bootleggers were arrested in a week. More than half of them were women.

Opportunities for Women

Having been banned from the legal alcohol trade, women in Colorado took full advantage of black-market booze. They drank and made alcohol.

Women held every sort of illegal job related to booze during prohibition. They ran kitchen stills, sold liquor, and smuggled alcohol. When police were tipped off to moonshine stills, they often found women operating them from their kitchens.

Women also got new chances in law enforcement. In the early 1920s, four women in Denver were appointed as deputy sheriffs to crack down on the alcohol trade. Throughout prohibition, several other police departments hired their first female officers. Edith Barker, a member of the WCTU, became Denver’s first female police officer on May 2, 1920.

Repeal

By the late 1920s, Coloradans seemed eager to end prohibition. In 1926 Colorado became the first state to hold a vote calling for the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment. The vote failed.

The Denver Post hosted its own “Rocky Mountain Referendum on Prohibition.” The newspaper printed ballots asking readers whether they were for or against prohibition. Based on the 110,000 newspaper ballots, Coloradans favored repeal. However, eligible voters still supported temperance.

By 1928 more than 12,000 liquor-violation cases were filed in the Denver courts. Only half of them had been heard. The law had become a burden on the state’s executive and judicial branches.

In November 1932, Colorado voted on repeal again. This time, repeal received 67 percent of the vote. Starting April 7, 1933, beer with a maximum alcohol content of 3.2 percent by volume could be legally sold in the state. However, federal prohibition was still in effect nationwide. This meant that beer could be bought and sold in Colorado.  However, it was illegal to travel with or ship it across state lines. Later that same year, the US Congress approved an amendment to end prohibition. By December 5, 1933, thirty-six states, including Colorado, had ratified the Twenty-first Amendment. National prohibition was repealed.

According to the Rocky Mountain News, beer sales alone made the alcohol industry more than $200,000 (roughly $4 million today) on the first day of statewide repeal. Equipment builders, laborers, and railroads all benefited from the end of prohibition. The News guessed that in Denver alone, more than 1,000 retailers would be issued liquor licenses during April 1933.

Alcohol quickly became a part of Coloradan's lives again. Former Colorado breweries returned to beer production. This included the Tivoli Brewing Company in Denver and Coors in Golden. They had produced products such as porcelain and nonalcoholic beverages during prohibition. Mobsters who had profited from prohibition were gone within a few months. The law no longer prevented women and American Indians from entering places that sold alcohol. The Twenty-first Amendment removed alcohol laws that targeted groups of people.

Legacy

Since prohibition, Colorado has reclaimed its saloon roots. As a state, Colorado currently has more than 400 established breweries. It is the top US state in microbreweries per capita. In 2019 Coloradans voted craft beer as their state’s most iconic drink. Colorado is also home to vibrant spirit industry. There is also a celebrated wine industry based in the Grand Valley.   

Prohibition in Colorado (1916–33) banned the sale of alcohol. The goal was to reduce violence, drunkenness, and crime. The prohibition era in Colorado saw an increase in organized crime and corruption.

Origins

During the Colorado Gold Rush of 1858–59, mining camps and early towns used saloons as places for government. Later, saloons served as locations for labor union meetings. They were also hot spots for gambling and boxing.

Because the rough-and-tumble saloon scene, Colorado saw a push for alcohol prohibition. Legal and moral arguments for the control of liquor existed as early as the mid-1860s. Some towns were founded as dry. These included Greeley (Union Colony) and Longmont (Chicago-Colorado Colony) in the early 1870s. The idea of turning the entire state dry did not gain traction until the end of the century. A state law passed in 1889 outlawed the sale or delivery of alcohol to American Indians. Further efforts to ban alcohol followed.

Building Support

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, reform-minded Progressives saw alcohol as the source of many problems. They believed that alcohol consumption led to unrest and moral failings. Reformers saw saloon culture as a product of immigration. Several leaders of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) were also members of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). Their stance on banning alcohol was based on strong anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic feelings.

Many of the antialcohol Progressives were also women with newly gained voting rights. The women were concerned about drinkers and gamblers who left their families poor. Colorado men opposed the 1877 referendum on women’s suffrage. Men were afraid women would vote for prohibition. By the time women gained the right to vote in 1893, many men had changed their stance. They had taken up the cause of prohibition. Prohibition was no longer a gendered issue. It was a unifying Progressive idea.

Progressives worked to make drinking a male-only activity staring in 1901. They passed a law that kept women from entering saloons or buying alcohol. The law was upheld by the state and federal Supreme Courts.

In 1907, cities could vote on whether to go dry. By 1909 Colorado Springs, Fort Collins, Aurora, and Greeley used this law to ban alcohol within a mile of their borders.

The biggest divide over alcohol was between rural and urban areas. Denver, Teller, and Alamosa counties were against prohibition. All were home to major industrial centers. They were also home to higher numbers of immigrants than lived in the counties voting to go dry.

Prohibition Takes Effect

During the years leading up to prohibition, the WCTU, KKK, and Anti-Saloon League toured the state with their campaign. They spoke with lawmakers. The groups demanded a ban on all alcohol. By 1914 the WCTU gathered enough signatures to get a prohibition referendum on the ballot. Donations from industrial leaders such as John D. Rockefeller, Jr. helped their campaign. The culture of alcohol remained strong in Colorado. However, there was not an organized campaign to keep it legal. The prohibition referendum passed with 52 percent of the vote.

On January 1, 1916, statewide prohibition of alcohol went into effect. That was four years before the federal Volstead Act brought prohibition to the entire country. The Volstead Act used language similar to the Colorado prohibition referendum. Both laws banned the sale and transport of all alcohol. Thousands of breweries and saloons went out of business in Colorado. Others changed to soft drink parlors. By 1917 statewide prohibition had closed as many as 1,615 saloons and 17 breweries in the Denver area.

Enforcement and Corruption

Problems enforcing the alcohol ban started within the first year. The governor appointed “dry agents” who broke civil liberty laws to enforce prohibition. Many soft drink parlors still sold alcohol. They gave free liquor to police officers to stay in business. Liquor from speakeasies would disappear from police evidence rooms.

Members of the governor’s “purity squads,” as newspapers called them, had an uncertain legal status. These squads were made up of men not formally trained as police officers. They would break down the doors of people’s houses without warrants. Anyone at the home would be arrested, with or without evidence that they had been drinking. Suspected drinkers or bootleggers were sometimes tied to chairs and beaten.

This activity prompted complaints against the state’s Chief Prohibition Officer, John R. Smith. Smith was sued for violating civil liberties.

Judge Benjamin Lindsey supported prohibition at first. However, he expressed frustration with how certain communities were targeted. Lindsey was also upset that wealthy Coloradans didn't obey dry laws. Newspapers reported police partying with rich people while drinking liquor taken from poorer communities.

Organized Crime

Because of prohibition, Colorado saw the growth of organized crime families in the 1920s and early 1930s. Gangsters emerged all around Colorado. Joe Berry, Joe Roma, and Joe Varra made names for themselves through the bootleg liquor trade. Prohibition laws did not decrease the demand for alcohol, so the market for illegal booze skyrocketed. During a 1924 sweep in Globeville, at least eighteen bootleggers were arrested in a week. More than half of them were women.

Opportunities for Women

Having been banned from the legal alcohol trade, women in Colorado took full advantage of black-market booze. They drank and made alcohol.

Women held every sort of illegal job related to booze. They ran kitchen stills, sold liquor, and smuggled alcohol. When police were tipped off, they found women operating moonshine stills from their kitchens.

Women also got new chances in law enforcement. In the early 1920s, four women in Denver were made deputy sheriffs as part of the crack down on the alcohol trade. Throughout prohibition, several other police departments hired their first female officers. Edith Barker, a member of the WCTU, became Denver’s first female police officer on May 2, 1920.

Repeal

By the late 1920s, Coloradans seemed eager to end prohibition. In 1926 Colorado became the first state to hold a vote calling for the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment. The vote failed.

By 1928 more than 12,000 liquor-violation cases were filed in the Denver courts. Only half of them had been heard. The law had become a burden on the state’s executive and judicial branches.

In November 1932, Colorado voted on repeal again. This time, repeal received 67 percent of the vote. However, federal prohibition was still in effect. This meant that beer could be bought and sold in Colorado.  However, it was illegal to travel with or ship it across state lines. Later that same year, the US Congress approved an amendment to end prohibition. By December 5, 1933, thirty-six states, including Colorado, had ratified the Twenty-first Amendment. National prohibition was repealed.

Alcohol became a part of Coloradan's lives again. Former Colorado breweries returned to beer production. This included the Tivoli Brewing Company in Denver and Coors in Golden. Mobsters who had profited from prohibition were gone within a few months.

Legacy

Since prohibition, Colorado has reclaimed its saloon roots. As a state, Colorado currently has more than 400 established breweries. There is also a celebrated wine industry based in the Grand Valley.