Seattle Prohibition

Prohibition consumed Seattle, igniting a war that lasted nearly twenty years and played out in the streets, waterways and even its town hall. Roy Olmstead, formerly a Seattle police officer, became the King of the Seattle Bootleggers, and Johnny Schnarr, running liquor down from Canada, helped to revolutionize the speedboat industry with his innovative rum-running ships. Frank Gatt, a south Seattle restaurateur, started the state's biggest moonshining operation. Skirting around the law, the Coast Guard and the zealous assistant director of the Seattle Prohibition Bureau, William Whitney, was no simple feat, but many rose to the challenge. Author Brad Holden tells the spectacular story of Seattle in the time of Prohibition. Holden's book was included in Seattle Metropolitan Magazine's "Big Seattle Reading List," was chosen as one of the best non-fiction books of 2019 by the King County Library, and excepts of the book appeared as a cover story in Pacific Northwest Magazine.