One hundred years ago Friday, Butler County awoke to a different nation.

On Jan. 16, 1920, the manufacture and distribution of alcoholic beverages had been legal. By midnight, the Volstead Act took effect, turning America into a “dry” country.

“WHOLESALE LIQUOR ARRESTS EXPECTED” shouted a seven-column headline atop the Butler Eagle on Jan. 17, 1920.

For weeks ahead of Prohibition's enforcement, the Eagle reported on its possible effects. Some feared the negative effects of dumping thousands of barrels of beer into the gutter, believing nearby fish may “go on a tear.”

But when the day arrived, it was, well, sober.

“Dry year's eve passed aridly in Butler last night,” another front page story stated. There was no mention of Prohibition in the following day's paper.

In modern-day 2020, some municipalities hold true to dry laws of a bygone era. Throughout the commonwealth, 681 local governments are what the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board considers dry or partially dry. In other words, those municipalities forbid either the sale of liquor or beer at restaurants, the establishment of beer distributors, or the opening of Fine Wine & Good Spirits stores.Butler County is responsible for about 4 percent of those dry areas, as 29 county areas are on the liquor board's list of dry or partially dry municipalities. Portersville and Muddy Creek Township are the two completely dry localities in the county as both voted to ban state stores altogether in 1953. Other partially dry areas include Bruin, East Butler, Harrisville, Adams Township and Mercer Township.According to Sean Kelly, PLCB press secretary, much like both the 18th Amendment banning alcohol and the 21st ending prohibition, voters must pass a referendum to turn a dry municipality wet, or vice-versa, during a primary or general election.Before 2016, such a vote had to be during a primary election in an odd-numbered year.Kelly said when a municipality seeks to go wet, it's because there is a believed economic benefit to allowing retail liquor or beer sales. He added the results of these referendums are far from unanimous, as some places retain a grip on alcohol sale bans.“Speaking anecdotally, we do see a number of municipalities that try to go wet during virtually every election anymore,” he said. “But we still see municipalities in PA that vote to remain dry.”

Constitutional Prohibition caused even less of a reaction in Butler than did the wartime alcohol prohibition, implemented July 1, 1919. Wartime prohibition, which came into effect nearly eight months after World War I ended, prompted widespread sales — “hand over fist,” the Eagle reported — of whiskey in the days leading up to the event.“Stacked half way to the ceiling on improvised shelves at the back of the bar were open cases and racks of whiskey in sizes from half pints to quarts,” read an Eagle article from June 30, 1919. “Sales were being made as rapidly as bartenders could reach and secure the desired quantity requested by the thirsty customers.”Those sales weren't as widespread just before constitutional Prohibition. The Eagle reported on Jan. 16, 1920, there was quite a bit of drink left in Butler, although it had likely been stockpiled months ahead of time.“There is whiskey in this city. Oodles and oodles of it, so it is said, but no one knows where,” one story reported. “Former saloon keepers, some of them at least, will never be found with a severe cold and no 'medicine' around.”By May, Butler saw its first bootlegging raid, in which Sheriff George W. Stoner arrested Jim Yeaman and Simon Thomas for selling Jamaican ginger — a highly alcoholic medicine used to treat minor ailments — at their store on Hansen Avenue.Federal Prohibition officers confiscated 500 gallons of wine and moonshine from the mining village of Kaylor in October. And near the end of December, Frank Vicari, who operated Bowman Hotel on Center Avenue, was sentenced to six months at the Allegheny County Workhouse and Inebriate Asylum for selling liquor without a license.Perhaps it's no surprise, though, that Prohibition didn't bode well in the region in which the Whiskey Rebellion occurred.An Aug. 4, 1920, an Eagle editorial decried the failure of Prohibition enforcement in Western Pennsylvania.“The ease with which whiskey has been obtained at Pittsburgh and other Western Pennsylvania places and transported throughout the country has excited wonder for many months,” it read. “There has been a suspicion even that not all this liquor is old stock, but that distilling and brewing have gone on.”

In 1922, Butler County District Attorney James O. Campbell said the failure of prohibition enforcement at that point had been leniency in the courts and in juries. In 1922, the Eagle reported doctors had written so many medical prescriptions for liquor that they ran out of blank scripts, resorting instead to writing them on plain paper.“(John) Exnicious (a federal Prohibition agent) said that it is permissable (sic) to write 'emergency' prescriptions in real emergency cases, but the large number issued here became suspicious,” a Feb. 4, 1922 story stated.By 1923, the state government began to see Prohibition as a failure. Outgoing Gov. William C. Sproul delivered a defeatist speech to the General Assembly, saying the populist Prohibition was unpopular in the commonwealth.“Until the sentiment of the people earnestly supports the dry laws, their enforcement will be extremely difficult and their general effect more harmful than beneficial,” he said. “Even in states which have had prohibition for years, there has been much more illicit trade in intoxicating liquors than before the passage of the federal enforcement act.”

Pennsylvania's newly-elected governor, Gifford Pinchot, took a more hard-line approach.“I regard the present flagrant failure to enforce the Volstead law as a blot on the good name of Pennsylvania and the United States,” Pinchot said in his Jan. 16, 1923, inaugural speech. “I share in the belief that no determined concerted effort to enforce the law has yet been made, and I propose not only to press with all my power for the abolition of the saloon, but also to make sure that the government of this state takes its full and effective part in such an effort.”Even with a renewed interest in Prohibition enforcement — in Western Pennsylvania alone between 1926 and 1930, 18,000 people were arrested; about 4 million gallons of mash, moonshine, wine, beer and miscellaneous spirits were confiscated; and 3,000 distilleries were shut down. A Pittsburgh Post reporter estimated in 1930 that the region was still the “wettest spot in the United States.”

The end of an eraPinchot was elected to his second, nonconsecutive term in 1930. Three years later, Utah unanimously ratified the 21st Amendment, bringing the country's dry era to an end. But Dec. 5, 1933, was shockingly quiet in Butler, the Eagle reported.“Repeal was greeted with almost complete indifference here,” the paper reported. “Night life on Main street was just like night life any other night and that, police will tell you, isn't much.”Pinchot had a plan to keep alcohol consumption to a minimum despite the new amendment.The PLCB was established just days before liquor became legal nationwide. Pinchot's liquor control bill granted the commonwealth “absolute” control of spirit sales and established state stores, according to the Nov. 29, 1933, edition of the Butler Eagle.

While constitutional Prohibition began a century ago and ended more than 86 years ago, its effects are still seen in Pennsylvania. Many provisions from Pinchot's liquor law are still extant: Bars and restaurants must buy their booze from the PLCB, restaurants have to meet seating capacity requirements to sell alcohol, and customers have to consume spirits at restaurants or buy them at a state store.Individual municipalities retained the ability to remain dry. Middlesex Township is one such example. Restaurants in Middlesex had a dry spell that ended only in May 2019, when voters in the township overwhelmingly passed a referendum uncorking businesses' ability to receive a liquor license. And while residents can now buy a beer in a restaurant, retail beer sales are still forbidden in Middlesex Township, according to the PLCB.Even with the unanimous backing of voters, the township remains partially dry because the ballot question has to be worded very specifically, following language in the 1955 liquor code and applying to just one type of alcohol ban. Depending on the type of alcohol law changing, a municipality must ask its voters one of two dozen questions.Kelly said there have been instances in the past in which a municipality's residents voted to go wet, but the question was worded incorrectly and the vote was invalid.In addition, municipalities may only hold a vote once every four years per the liquor code.Even with the restrictions of Pennsylvania's liquor laws, county breweries said it's not a hassle to comply with the law or get a license. Travis McCullough of Dented Keg, an Adams Township brewery, said when the company opened in October 2019, construction was the biggest challenge.“I don't think we had any issues with getting our beer and liquor license,” he said.Additionally, recent law changes — selling beer and wine in gas stations or grocery stores and opening state stores on Sundays, for example — might be a sign that the tide is turning away from Prohibition's effects.