Seattle Prohibition: Bootleggers, Rumrunners, and Graft in the Queen City

During the early 1900s, drunken roistering, shouting prostitutes and their customers, street fights, cockfights, and other rowdy behavior in saloons, gambling parlors, and brothels scandalized many Washington state citizens. That, and the graft and corruption around such establishments, provoked a ferocious backlash: Prohibition, and banning of sales of alcoholic beverages in the state a full five years before the start of National Prohibition.