Continuously serving Kosciusko County since 1854
Billy Sunday, the famed baseball evangelist who moved to Winona Lake in 1911, reached 100 million people in his evangelistic crusades. But during the first 20 years of the 1900s, Sunday was also an ardent crusader against alcohol.
Sunday considered the consumption of alcohol to be the root of many American families’ domestic problems as men would waste their earnings and their time in saloons rather than tending to their families.
One of Sunday’s most famous sermons was titled “Get on the Water Wagon.” He proclaimed, “I am the sworn eternal and uncompromising enemy of the liquor traffic. I have been and will go on fighting that damnable dirty rotten business with all the power at my command.”
Even more memorable was his declaration that consuming alcohol was a sin: “I’m against sin. I’ll kick it as long as I’ve got a foot, I’ll fight it as long as I’ve got a fist, I’ll butt it as long as I’ve got a head, and I’ll bite it as long as I’ve got a tooth. And when I’m old, fistless, footless, and toothless, I’ll gum it till I go home to glory and it goes home to perdition.”
But Sunday wasn’t the only anti-liquor advocate in Winona Lake. All three of the major anti-liquor organizations had regional or national offices in Winona Lake. They were the Prohibition Party, founded in 1869; the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, founded in 1874; and the Anti-Saloon League, founded in 1893.
A leading figure who advocated teetotaling was William Jennings Bryan, the three-time presidential candidate who served several years as the president of the Winona Assembly. In a book titled “Jesus and Gin,” author Barry Hankins pointed out when Bryan was named secretary of state by Woodrow Wilson in 1913, he famously refused to serve alcohol at State Department functions.
In 1914, Josephus Daniels, secretary of the Navy, forbade any alcoholic drinks on board naval ships, actively replacing them with grape juice. A father-and-son pair of dentists named Welch had developed “unfermented grape juice” as an alternative to wine in the administration of holy communion. Welch’s Grape Juice is one of today’s leading producers of the beverage.
Eighteenth Amendment Established Prohibition
The first annual Temperance Conference was held in Winona Lake July 12-18, 1908. A bound copy of all the addresses given at the conference is available at the Winona History Center. Keynote presentations were by Robert B. Glenn, ex-governor of North Carolina, and by J. Frank Hanly, ex-governor of Indiana.
All the national anti-liquor sentiment culminated in the passage of the 18th Amendment in 1919, making Prohibition Era the period from 1920 to 1933 when the United States prohibited the production, importation, transportation and sale of alcoholic beverages
The 18th Amendment passed in 1919 with a 68% supermajority in the House of Representatives and 76% support in the Senate and was ratified by 46 out of 48 states. Enabling legislation, known as the Volstead Act, set down the rules for enforcing the federal ban and defined the types of alcoholic beverages that were prohibited.
The Prohibition Party, the oldest third political party in the U.S., frequently held national meetings in this area. Their presidential nominating conventions in 1948 and 1960 were held in Winona Lake, with the latter in the Westminster Hotel. The 1956 convention was held at Camp Alexander Mack on Waubee Lake, and Indianapolis conventions were held in 1932, 1944 and 1952.
The Prohibition Party has nominated some interesting personalities for national offices. Paul “Wrong Way” Corrigan was a party senatorial nominee. He is the aviator who on July 17, 1938, left New York to fly to Long Beach, Calif., and landed 28 hours later in Dublin, Ireland. Stuart Hamblen, the singing TV cowboy who was converted in Billy Graham’s 1949 Los Angeles tent crusade, ran against Dwight Eisenhower for U.S. President in 1952 under the Prohibition Party’s banner.
Prohibition Repealed in 1933
In 1933 state conventions ratified the 21st Amendment, which repealed Prohibition. The amendment was fully ratified on Dec. 5, 1933. Federal laws enforcing Prohibition were then repealed
The alcohol issue surfaced locally in January 1979 when a delegation representing the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and concerned residents appeared at the Winona Lake Town Board meeting to discuss the news sweeping the lakefront about a liquor license application that had been submitted to the Indiana Alcoholic Beverage Commission.
Twenty-one residents, all vehemently opposed to opening a liquor store inside the town’s corporate limits, questioned the constitutionality of the license application submitted to the state ABC by Sonny Nellans, of Rt. 7, Warsaw.
James Walmer, the town’s attorney, said he believed state ABC members could grant one package liquor license per 5,000 population in a town. If that point were accurate, the attorney questioned whether Winona Lake would be eligible for a package liquor store license since the town’s population was 2,811 when the 1970 census was taken.
On Feb. 15, 1979, Kosciusko County Alcoholic Beverage Board members set a precedent by voting 2-1 in favor of a liquor, beer and wine dealer license for Sonny Jay Nellans. He proposed to open Nellans Wholesale Liquors, a package store, in a building on the east side of the Lakeview Shopping Center. The proposed location was 100 feet inside the corporate limits of Winona Lake — a town that had been “dry” since it was founded. The following April, however, three members of the Indiana Alcoholic Beverage Commission members voted to disapprove a license application for Nellans’ proposed store.
In recent years the issue seems to have receded, and a number of organizations now serve alcohol in Winona Lake. The Winona Lake Town Council adopted an ordinance dated Dec. 19, 2023, to establish a Designated Outdoor Recreation Area (DORA) for the serving and consumption of alcohol. The ordinance lists Port Winona Wine & Market, Light Rail Café, Cerulean Restaurant and Boathouse Restaurant as retailer permittees.
