Prohibition and Booze in O.C.

Sheriff Jernigan and deputies destroy contraband liquor at the Fruit Street Yard, 1932.

During Prohibition -- from 1920 to 1933 -- it was illegal to make, sell, or transport alcoholic beverages in the United States. Prohibition in Orange County, California was a study in contrasts. On one hand, forty-two miles of largely unpatrolled coastline attracted rum runners. But in many local communities, the roots of temperance and prohibition went back generations prior to the Volstead Act’s attempt to take the “roar” out of the “Roaring ‘20s.” 

Orange County’s origins followed closely on the heels of the development of the Prohibition Party, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), and other anti-alcohol organizations backed (in many cases) by various Protestant denominations. Many of these groups had formed in part as a response to the many traumatized Civil War veterans who had returned home, self-medicated for their PTSD with alcohol, and thereby created a national epidemic of beaten women and children.

The Exchange Saloon, 132 W Center St, Anaheim, in 1908. Proprietor William Stark (at the end of the bar) would serve as mayor from 1920 to 1923.

At the same time, there was pushback against the "drys" from Catholics, German Lutherans, Episcopalians, ardent hell-raisers, and others who felt the government had no business legislating either alcohol or morality. 

In 1894 the WCTU and a Methodist minister circulated a petition to ban alchohol throughout Orange County. They collected 1,455 signatures, which was impressive at the time. The Orange County Board of Supervisors considered the idea seriously. But the Santa Ana Standard's front page featured a full list of the names of those who'd signed the petition. When the elected officials realized that most of the signees were women -- and therefore inelligable to vote -- any hopes for such an ordinance were scuttled.

In 1900, Orange County voters narrowly turned down yet another effort to ban saloons.

The battle over liquor was at the very heart of our local politics, and a candidate’s success usually depended on whether his stance on the issue matched that of the residents of his town or district.

Like much of America, this left Orange County as a patchwork of “wet” and “dry” communities, depending on local attitudes. People in dry towns like Brea visited wet towns like the former German vineyard colony of Anaheim to “tie one on.”  Further south, Seal Beach thrived as a legal wet resort. Huntington Beach began with the intention that no liquor would ever be permitted within its borders, but found itself at the opposite end of the spectrum when the oil boom brought thousands of “roughnecks” to town.

Santa Ana parade float sponsored by Women’s Christian Temperance Union, circa 1900. (Courtesy First American Corp.)

“Orange…was incorporated in 1888 solely to keep out saloons,” the Los Angeles Times’ Orange County Edition explained in a 1976 retrospective on local politics. “By 1903, Santa Ana would pass a Prohibition ordinance that would last… thirty years... On the other hand, Fullerton would be incorporated in 1904 as a means of retaining the saloons...”

This somewhat chaotic, localized approach was swept away in 1920 when the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the Volstead Act went into effect, banning most alcohol nationwide. Almost immediately, people found ways around the law: smuggling, making home-brew booze, and going to secret “speak easy” saloons which served alcohol and also sometimes catered to other vices like gambling. With an approximate 700% profit margin, criminals had the most to gain from prohibition and gangs took over various regions of the country, often fighting each other for territory. 

But unlike Al Capone’s Chicago or mob-run New York, Southern California never had a powerful organized crime syndicate or czar running everything. There were many local bootleggers running operations large and small. They tended to respect each other’s “territory” and seldom created the kind of gang violence seen “back east.” 

The thinly populated coast of Orange County was a popular place for smuggling. Large boats from Canada or Mexico would anchor far out in international waters. Speedboats would offload cargo from these liquor boats and make deliveries to hush-hush delivery points all along the coast. Al Capone even made a trip out from Chicago to make a serious but failed attempt to purchase the entire Rancho Santa Margarita -- almost certainly for its unguarded Mexico-adjacent coastline.

Bootlegging equipment confiscated from a warehouse at 708 Huntington Ave., Huntington Beach. (Huntington Beach News, 1-7-1932)

As it was, local fishermen were often recruited as rum runners, a job which came to have almost a folk-hero-like aura about it. Many doubled their incomes this way. They’d often come ashore at night, amid the cliff-sheltered coves around Laguna, at Alamitos Bay or Anaheim Landing, anywhere south of Salt Creek, or at the piers in Seal Beach and San Clemente. Sometimes trucks were waiting for the delivery and sometimes cases of liquor were hidden in the sand or among the bushes for later pick-up. Locals who happened to see the activity knew enough to look the other way, a practice which, as historian Doris Walker put it, often “netted them free bottles” and kept their liquor cabinets “among the best-stocked around.”

Locally, Tony “the Admiral” Cornero – with help from his brother Frank -- ran one of the most successful bootlegging operations, using a shrimping business as a cover. Seal Beach historian Larry Strawther identifies at least two other operations also smuggling booze on the north coast of Orange County: “The City Hall Gang (so named because of its very strong influence at Los Angeles City Hall) was led by Marvin ‘Doc’ Schoulweiler and L.A. gambling kingpin Milton ‘Farmer’ Page. Getting a larger and larger foothold were the Black Hand Sicilians (with their New York and Chicago roots)..." 

Los Angeles organized crime historian J. Michael Niotta responds that he's unsure "if the Page brothers ever bootlegged. I believe their outfit specialized in hijacking rum runner shipments once they got loaded onto trucks." 

"Plenty of legal operations were exploited as well," Niotta writes, including pharmacies that were sanctioned by the government "to produce and sell medicinal whiskies and vineyards [that were] allowed to produce wine for religious ceremonies. My great grandfather had several businesses that were legally allowed to purchase alcohol for making hair tonics and perfumes. They then converted it to drinkable liquor and sold it in bulk to resell bootleggers. Plenty of other slick plays were in motion."

According to Laguna Beach historians Merle and Mabel Ramsey, sometime in the 1920s a caravan of cars came to town with film equipment. Local men were hired as "extras" for $3 an hour. They shot a scene on the beach depicting rum runners offloading contraband from a ship into trucks waiting on the shore. As the director shouted instructions through a megaphone, the men hastily unloaded the ship. But before they could react, the ship, the truck and the cars all sped away. The Laguna "extras" were pretty mad when they discovered they weren't going to appear in a movie after all!

As Prohibition dragged on, the game of cat and mouse between bootleggers and law enforcement as well as a little head-butting between rival criminal operations took many twists and turns. 

Of course, most Orange Countians purchased and consumed their bootleg liquor surreptitiously throughout Prohibition. A knowing wink to the right storekeeper – or often the local pharmacist – could get you a bottle easily enough. Most of the “good stuff” smuggled through O.C. was destined for Los Angeles. But Orange Countians were sometimes stuck with pure grain alcohol or homemade “bathtub gin,” both of which tended to induce vomiting even when mixed with soda or grapefruit juice. Still, it was good enough to keep places like Seal Beach and Balboa full of tipsy weekend revelers and to fill the local jails. 

Balboa, Aug. 1928. During Prohibition, Balboa was a “wide-open town” with minimal enforcement of liquor laws.

Not all bootlegging was done secretively. Judge Robert Gardner, who grew up in Balboa, remembered, “you could unload your illegal liquor at the city dock... One of my most vivid recollections of Balboa in the early twenties is that of sitting on the railing of the city dock and watching [bootlegger Tony Cornero’s] rum runners in action. …[Around midnight] a long line of black sedans would line up on Washington Street. The drivers would get out and stand around and smoke cigarettes… Then I would hear the muffled, rumbling roar of high-speed motors idling up the bay. Pretty soon, sleek, powerful speedboats would come into view and moor at the city dock. The drivers of the cars would pick up the cases and load them into their cars. When all the cases were loaded, the drivers would take off for Los Angeles. It was all very open.” 

Gardner would then run down to the Green Dragon soda fountain where he worked, to welcome the smugglers for a late night snack. The “tough-looking, unshaven bunch, attired in watch caps and pea jackets” stacked their rifles and “gorged themselves on sundaes, sodas, banana splits, malts, everything we had.” 

Eventually, being so open would backfire, as Frank Cornero (Tony’s brother) was arrested by the Feds during one such Balboa delivery. 

Meanwhile, writes Strawther, Tony Cornero “bribed officials in Laguna Beach and Seal Beach,” sometimes throwing as much as $25,000 worth of cash in bundles into the windows of parked police cars. It’s not hard to imagine that this may have gone on in other communities as well.

Jewel City Cafe, Seal Beach, circa 1921.

By late 1922, Seal Beach was “the wettest spot in Southern California,” according to the Los Angeles Times. Already considered “wide-open,” its reputation was solidified during the wild Prohibition era. In addition to wholesome fun on the sand and at the Joy Zone amusement park, Seal Beach was also a hotbed of liquor, prostitution, gambling and other vice. Sweeps by Orange County Sheriff Sam Jernigan's deputies, sometimes netting hundreds of gallons of booze and dozens of arrests – barely made a dent in the crime.

Once Pacific Coast Highway was completed, many vice-bent Angelenos would drive down to Mexico for a weekend of drinking and gambling. Beachside lunchrooms and refreshment stands in Orange County towns like San Clemente became popular stop-offs for travelers. Unfortunately, auto wrecks from inebriated drivers coming back from Tijuana also became common.

Danni Murphy of the Orange County District Attorney’s office wrote that the D.A. “hired detectives to attempt to purchase liquor in ‘blind pig’ establishments, places… pretending to be engaged in some legitimate business activity. Raids turned up everything from pints of raw corn liquor to complete and sophisticated stills… First offenders were allowed to plead guilty to illegal possession of alcoholic beverage and were fined $500... ‘Repeaters’ were charged with unlawful sale and usually sentenced to six months in jail.” At the end of these trials the booze was sometimes poured down a manhole near the Courthouse or at the County Yard, “as a message to the rest of the public. Apparently, one defendant escaped a jail sentence when his attorney grabbed the jar containing the alleged liquor and drank it right in front of the jury. With the evidence destroyed, the judge had to dismiss the case.”

Prohibition had been controversial from the start, but it became less popular with each passing year.  Although dramatically lowering the rates of cirrhosis, prohibition increased crime, imposed a set of moral values on citizens who didn’t uniformly share those beliefs, and kept local government from collecting vast sums in taxes.

O.C. Sheriff Sam Jernigan (center, in glasses) watches illegal liquor being poured down a manhole. Such contraband was often stored in the Old Courthouse basement until the bootleggers’ trial was complete.

“The Noble Experiment” of nationwide Prohibition ended with the repeal of the 18th Amendment by the 21st Amendment on December 5, 1933. Orange County’s south coast, which had fared better than many areas during the Great Depression, went into an economic slump. But the fishermen went back to fishing full time and found the fish population had rebounded significantly during the years they’d been busy smuggling booze. Meanwhile, divers would, for many years, find large amounts of liquor on the ocean floor – no doubt dumped by rum runners when the Coast Guard came after them. 

Back on shore, bars and liquor stores opened their doors and alcohol once again flowed in restaurants, casinos, clubs and private residences. Legal booze was here to stay.

(This article is partially based on several of my articles that were published elsewhere in the past. Special thanks to Southern California organized crime historian Richard Warner for his sage advice and to J. Michael Niotta for his insights.)