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Landmark day • Friday, January 1, 1915

January 1, 1915: Arizona Goes Dry, and a Settlement That Meant to Be Dry Gets Its Law

Saloonkeepers across Arizona herd out quiet crowds and lock their doors, and the farm settlement that had wanted to be dry since 1897 gets a law it could never have passed itself.

Illustrated plaque for January 1, 1915 in Scottsdale history SCOTTSDALE JANUARY 1 1915 STATEHOOD & THE FARM TOWN

What happened

Arizona's prohibition amendment, approved by voters 25,887 to 22,743 on November 3, 1914, took effect in the first hour of the new year. The liquor dealers had to be rid of their stock by January 1, and the night passed quietly: in James McClintock's words, 'There were no wild orgies, as had been predicted.' The amendment had carried in only five counties, and Maricopa County's dry majority was about as large as the statewide margin.

Why it matters

Scottsdale's first settlers had vowed in 1897 'never to let alcohol get a foothold,' but an unincorporated settlement could pass no ordinance, so whatever kept it dry had been private or territorial. Prohibition put that intention into state law, and it was Maricopa County's vote that carried the amendment.

The vote that made it

On November 3, 1914, two years after Arizona’s men had voted women the ballot, the state approved a constitutional amendment prohibiting the manufacture and sale of liquor, 25,887 to 22,743. It was a narrow win built in one place. “In only five of the counties of the state did prohibition carry,” the historian James McClintock wrote two years later, “and the majority in Maricopa County alone was practically the same as that within the state at large.” The Arizona Republican’s front page the morning after the vote put it in a headline: “COUNTY GOES DRY AND ADDS TO STATE MAJORITY.”

The one Scottsdale campaign meeting on the question that turned up in the papers was a party rally. On October 10 the Progressive Party’s county candidates spoke to “a crowded school house,” with V. A. Vanderhoof in the chair, and the Rev. Daines of Tempe gave “a very clear idea of the dry amendment.” Scottsdale’s own count was never printed separately. The full story of the decade’s votes is in the 1910s politics chapter.

Midnight

The law took effect in the first hour of 1915. Saloons had until January 1 to be rid of their stock, and the predicted last-night riot did not come. McClintock again: “There were no wild orgies, as had been predicted. Very generally the liquor dealers at midnight herded out a quiet crowd, locked the doors and went home.”

The settlement that had wanted this since 1897

For Scottsdale the law put an old intention on paper. In 1897 the settlement’s correspondent, Alza Blount, had written that “it is the determination of the first settlers of Scottsdale never to let alcohol get a foothold in this part of the valley.” But Scottsdale was not a town, and could pass no ordinance. What kept it dry before 1915 was private, territorial or custom: the deed restriction and the 1897 local vote reported by Winfield Scott’s biographer, neither of them confirmed elsewhere, and a 1901 territorial local-option law whose use in the Scottsdale precinct is not recorded. The 1888–1911 politics chapter sets out what is and is not known.

After January 1, 1915 none of that mattered: the whole state was dry. Voters kept prohibition in 1916, when a Republican candidate for constable of the Tempe and Scottsdale precincts ran on the promise “I stand absolutely for prohibition and its coming amendments,” and Arizona stayed dry into national Prohibition.

The rest of the year is at 1915.