Prohibition Raids Reach Benton County Cellars
A Hover couple is left in tears after the Sheriff enforces the state's dry laws on their home-made vintage.
The state prohibition law was invoked for the first time in Benton county Tuesday of this week when Sheriff C. E. Duffy and Deputy E. L. Baxter descended into the cellar of F. B. Dobblaar, of Hover, and confiscated more than 100 gallons of home-made wines. The search was made upon a warrant sworn to by the sheriff as a result of numerous complaints from residents of Hover that Mr. Dobblaar was selling wine. Mr. Dobblaar, a sturdy old German who can’t quite understand the justice of any law which forbids his selling the fruits of his own labor, at first made strenuous objections to the officers’ entering his home. After being convinced that objections were futile he led the way to the cellar and assisted in loading the casks and kegs. The wine was brought to Kennewick and left in care of Deputy Baxter to await instructions from the prosecuting attorney. Mr. Dobblaar was not taken into custody, though he had been arrested previously for a similar offense. 'I raise peaches and I can’t sell them; I raise grapes and I can’t sell them and when I make wine you come and carry it away and want to put me in jail,' Dobblaar protested. 'I don’t advertise... but when a neighbor comes and wants a little wine I sell it to him.'
“I raise peaches and I can’t sell them; I raise grapes and I can’t sell them and when I make wine you come and carry it away.”
This 1916 raid highlights the early, messy enforcement of prohibition in Washington, years before the 18th Amendment. It captures the tension between rural self-sufficiency and the moral crusades of the era, a dynamic still seen in modern debates over the regulation of home industries and craft production.
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