Dry Oases: Local Prohibitions of Alcohol in Montgomery County, Maryland

Ranjit Dighe, State University of New York at Oswego (SUNY)

Eighty-five years after the repeal of national prohibition of alcohol in the United States, hundreds of American towns remain entirely or partially dry. This paper takes a case-study approach, examining the localities of Takoma Park, Damascus, and Kensington, in Montgomery County, Maryland. These towns stayed dry for well over half a century after repeal; two stayed dry into the twenty-first century. What kept them dry, in a state whose governor and senators were national leaders in the fight against Prohibition? Montgomery County, which had been dry since 1880, overwhelmingly backed repeal in 1933 but carved out exemptions for these towns. This paper uses interviews and contemporary accounts toward an explanation of why these localities were exempted in the first place and why prohibition persisted in them for so long, even after the county’s other dry towns had gone wet. Early evidence suggests that local church activism, notably by Methodists and Adventists in the early going and by Mormons later on, was influential. The “NIMBY” (not in my back yard) phenomenon in these suburban communities appears to have been important as well.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 79. Social and Political Contexts of Religious Change