Booze, Bullets and the Big Horn Basin Part III: The long road back to legal liquor

In Thermopolis, the return of legal beer was an occasion worth staying up for.

As Wyoming prepared to allow low-alcohol beer in May 1933, local sellers readied their businesses for midnight customers. The Thermopolis Independent Record reported that trucks loaded with beer were waiting at the state line, ready to begin deliveries as soon as the law allowed.

“During the early hours this morning citizens of Hot Springs County enjoyed the privilege of drinking beer legally for the first time in many years,” the newspaper reported.

After nearly 14 years of Wyoming Prohibition, a customer could buy a beer openly from a licensed business. But that first legal drink did not mean Prohibition was entirely over.

Beer came first. The repeal of national Prohibition followed. Wyoming’s own constitutional ban required another election, and a new system for selling liquor would not begin operating until 1935.

Across the Big Horn Basin, those changes brought celebration, political organizing and continued resistance from people who still believed the state had been right to go dry.

The experiment loses support

When Wyoming voters approved state Prohibition in November 1918, they did so by more than three to one. The state’s ban took effect July 1, 1919, ahead of national Prohibition the following January.

By the early 1930s, enthusiasm had faded. Years of illegal production, uneven enforcement and continued drinking had given repeal supporters plenty of arguments.

One outspoken Big Horn Basin critic was George McClellan, a Republican state senator from Washakie County and a rancher from the Ten Sleep area.

According to University of Wyoming historian Phil Roberts, McClellan introduced a bill in 1931 to abolish the state’s Prohibition enforcement department. He called the agency a sham and accused prominent defense lawyers of opposing repeal because they made money representing liquor defendants.

His argument did not carry the Senate. The bill failed, and lawmakers increased penalties for liquor violations while giving the enforcement department additional duties.

Yet the same legislature authorized an advisory referendum asking Wyoming voters whether the 18th Amendment should be repealed.

A November 1932 vote was held across the state. The same election would unseat unpopular U.S. President Herbert Hoover and elect Franklin Roosevelt. The nonbinding referendum over prohibition was decisive: 52,957 favored repeal and 21,015 opposed it. Repeal carried every county. The vote did not itself change the law. It did make public sentiment difficult to ignore.

The Basin’s divided loyalties

Even as statewide support shifted, the Basin remained divided. In early 1933, the Big Horn County attorney dismissed four liquor cases. The Basin Republican Rustler report explained that complaining witnesses had declined to appear and prosecute.

The cases illustrate one of the problems facing enforcement: officers and prosecutors could not always count on people to help carry a complaint through court.

Prohibition supporters, meanwhile, continued their campaign. The Women’s Christian Temperance Union used newspaper columns to defend the law and urge participation in the approaching repeal caucuses.

In February 1933, the Republican Rustler published a warning from the Rev. J. P. Pigott that repeal would elevate the liquor industry into a position of political power.

For supporters like Pigott, enforcement difficulties were a reason to keep fighting.

Cody organizes for repeal

In Park County, repeal supporters organized across party lines.

Democratic state Sen. B. C. Rumsey worked with Republican Milward Simpson to prepare for the precinct caucuses that would select delegates to county conventions. Those conventions would then choose Wyoming’s state ratification delegates.

“It is imperative that we do this, at once!” Rumsey wrote. “We must not slip up now, after working for this opportunity for the past 12 years!”

On May 12, 1933, repeal advocates gathered at the Park County Library in Cody. George T. Beck, a prominent Democrat, chaired the meeting. Republicans E. V. Robertson and Simpson addressed the group, as did Rumsey.

The meeting dealt with the practical work of winning an election: selecting candidates, organizing precincts and making sure supporters participated.

When dry leaders suggested keeping the polling places open later, repeal supporters agreed.

The May caucuses showed how far the political balance had shifted. Park County voted four to one for repeal, while Hot Springs and Washakie counties also produced large margins for the wet side.

Big Horn County’s results were more complicated.

All three Lovell precincts supported the dry side, as did Cowley and Byron. Burlington narrowly favored the wets, 57–51. Greybull and Basin voters narrowly supported repealing prohibition.

At the Big Horn County convention, however, repeal supporters prevailed, 27–17. All three delegates selected to represent the county in Casper favored repeal.

The north end of the Basin could remain a stronghold for Prohibition while its county delegation helped vote it out.

Beer returns, with rules

Legal beer did not mean an unrestricted return to the old saloon. Wyoming’s beer law limited who could sell the beverage and where customers could consume it. Local governments added their own requirements.

In Powell, the town council prohibited gambling and beer sales between 1 and 6 a.m. Applicants for licenses had to be citizens of good “moral character,” without defining exactly what behaviors were in fact moral. Sales were limited to grocery stores, cafes and hotels.

Those restrictions reflected an issue that would outlast repeal: how could communities permit drinking without restoring the problems they associated with the pre-Prohibition saloon?

In Thermopolis, preparations for beer’s return provided a more immediate answer. Licensed sellers readied their establishments, delivery trucks waited to move, and customers could finally buy the new beverage legally.

Stronger liquor 

remained prohibited

On May 25, 1933, 65 delegates gathered at Casper City Hall to consider ratifying the 21st Amendment, which would lead to an end to prohibition across the nation.  The setting offered a striking illustration of Prohibition’s troubles. Casper’s mayor, police chief and the Natrona County sheriff had been arrested and indicted in a massive federal liquor conspiracy case.

Those were accusations, not convictions. The trial later ended in acquittals for the remaining defendants. But the pending case supplied an awkward backdrop for a convention called to repeal the law.

Simpson, representing Park County, added some humor before the ratification vote. He proposed spending convention money on beer for the delegates. The motion passed. Roberts notes that the record does not establish whether the beer was supplied.

The delegates then approved repeal without a dissenting vote, making Wyoming the fourth state to ratify the amendment.

National Prohibition ended December 5, 1933, when the required thirty-six states had ratified it.

Wyoming still had its own constitutional restriction to remove.

The final steps

On November 6, 1934, Wyoming voters approved the repeal of the state constitutional ban, in a landslide 71,126 to 22,404. Gov. Leslie Miller proclaimed the final repeal in force December 1.

The question now was how legal liquor would be sold. Miller advocated a system that would avoid the abuses of the old saloon while keeping prices low enough to discourage bootlegging.

In 1935, Wyoming established its new liquor control system. The state entered the wholesale liquor business, while local officials awarded retail licenses within the state’s rules.

Basin communities soon became part of that process. Thermopolis sought additional licenses, as did Worland and Powell. The Worland Grit reported local licensing decisions in April.

Wyoming’s wholesale operation began April 1, 1935. Liquor that had once generated raids and criminal cases now also generated legal business and state revenue. 

For the Big Horn Basin, Prohibition had ended through a succession of votes, laws and local decisions. Some communities welcomed the change. Others had fought to preserve the ban.

Nearly 16 years after Wyoming went dry, alcohol could again be sold openly under a regulated system. The argument over whether people should be allowed to buy it had given way to arguments over who could sell it, where it could be sold and what rules the sellers should follow.

The bottles were back.