5/12/2010:
Prohibition began in 1920 with the passage of the 18th amendment, but North Dakota was already dry, having coming to the Union as a dry state in 1889. from statehood. By 1933, prohibition was wildly unpopular throughout the US, and the federal legislation was later repealed with the passage of the Twenty-first Amendment. In the meantime, Congress passed an amendment that made beverages with a 3.2% alcohol content legally available. However, this amendment also gave states the right to restrict or ban the purchase or sale of alcohol. Consequently, situations arose where dry towns and counties neighbored wet ones.
One such area was along the North Dakota / Montana border. Mondak was a small town located just across the state line in Montana, and one newspaper published that as beer "flowed once again" into the town, Mondak began to revive—as did the beer—thirsty Dakotans who were able to get supplied there, while they waited for July 1, when North Dakota would go "into the beer column."
North Dakota began examining its dry laws, and Senate Bill 263 established that liquor stores could be opened in towns of certain sizes where there were police forces, and that those stores should be closed on Sundays. But this was not enough, and on this date in 1933, The Belfield Review reported that petitions for initiation of a new beer law were being circulated in Dickinson by members of the sponsoring organization, the newly formed Association for Legalizing Beer.
The group was seeking thirty to forty thousand signers so as to change the law, which had just been drafted by the 23rd session of the legislature. Their proposal would legalize manufacture of beer in North Dakota, impose a tax on beer sold, fix a license fee for retailers and distributors and provide for a beer commissioner, who would license those who wanted to sell beer wholesale or retail, and who would be appointed by the governor for two-year terms.
By 1936, North Dakotans could finally drink stronger beer and hard liquor with the rest of the country, after the passage of a measure that legalized it if all the revenue was then earmarked for property tax reduction.
Obviously, we don't have a state beer commissioner today, but the drinking of beer is now allowed across the state-and in the end, that was most of the battle for many residents in early North Dakota.
Dakota Datebook written by Sarah Walker
Sources:
The Belfield Review, Friday, May 5, 1933
The Belfield Review, May 12, 1933
The Belfield Review, April 28, 1933
S.B. 263-1933
Reference:
Frank E. Vyzralek & Mark J. Halvorson, Exhibit: Roll Out the Barrel: Beer in North Dakota , (Bismarck, ND: State Historical Society of North Dakota, 1996).