It was 99 years ago this week that the era of Prohibition first took effect. From Jan. 16, 1920 until Dec. 5, 1933, the manufacturing, sale, and transporting of alcohol became illegal across the U.S. following the ratification of the 18th Amendment.

However, Prohibition was the law in scattered locations, from the earliest Colonial times until the passage of the 21st Amendment in 1933.

The colony of Georgia outlawed alcoholic beverages during the 1730s. After the establishment of organizations such as the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and the Anti-Saloon League in the late 19th century, more and more states jumped on board the anti-booze wagon.

Here on the Cape, Prohibition actually dates back over three centuries, although an early local ban didn’t last long.

“The sale and use of spirits was not frowned upon by either church or state, and was often the medium used in payment of a debt,” according to the Oct. 28, 1948 edition of The Cape Codder. “In fact, some of the towns paid part of the minister’s salary with a barrel or so of rum. Besides the meeting houses, the inns were the only gathering places that the people had, so perhaps that explains why there were 17 barrooms along the north side of Yarmouth during 1817.”

The Codder also noted how Prohibition was “an old travesty on the Cape,” dating back to 1700. “A minster tried to close a Chatham public house because the proprietor sold rum to the congregation,” the Codder noted. “After carrying the case through two courts, and losing in both, the minister appealed to Plymouth Colony which afforded him the doubtful pleasure of seeing the innkeeper fined 10 shillings.

He won his legal case but lost his job, for public opinion was too strong against him and he was forced from town, while the inn continued to dispense its liquid cheer.”

On the Cape, many churches in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were in support of the temperance movement, and often welcomed representatives from the Women Christian Temperance Union and the Anti-Saloon League as speakers for Sunday services. For instance, the M.E. Church of Wellfleet hosted Orville Poland of the Anti-Saloon League of Boston in September of 1919.

“His address was very instructive,” reported the Chatham Monitor. “He had a large audience and interested one.”

Some towns became “dry” in the late 19th century, even Provincetown, which outlawed alcohol by local option.

“Like its national counterpart, the 18th Amendment, Prohibition, this ordinance was more or less a farce from the very beginning,” wrote Mary Heaton Vorse in “Here’s Provincetown,” which was published by the Provincetown Historical Association in 1979.

Even though there were no drinking establishments in Provincetown, “almost every house in town had a bottle of wine or whiskey in the closet,” Vorse wrote. There was another way to obtain alcoholic beverages — by prescription.

“If worse came to worse, one arrived at a local doctor’s office coughing and sneezing, the obliging M.D. at a small price would write out a chit which could be redeemed for a pint of either whiskey or brandy at Adam’s Drugstore,” Vorse noted. “The only change that occurred when national prohibition went into effect is that it made liquor easier to get.”

Another Outer Cape native who used the prescription option was Eastham’s Bernie Collins, who had just returned from serving with both the French and American forces in France during World War I.

“Bernie received the regular French rations, and this included a liter of wine very day, wrote John Ullman for The Cape Codder in 1977. “He got very used to the wine with his meals.” Dr. Frank Stubbs, who happened to be in South Wellfleet for the summer, provided the prescription, and Collins got his wine from S.S. Pierce.

After the 21st Amendment was passed, Provincetown, “which had been dry for nearly half a century before the 18th amendment was ratified, went wet along with the rest of the country,” according to Vorse. “Taverns, bars, and package stores were seen in Provincetown for the first time in living memory.”

Don Wilding, a writer and public speaker on Cape Cod lore, can be reached via email at donwilding@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter at @WildingsCapeCod and on Facebook at @donwildingscapecod. Shore Lore appears weekly.