Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 February 1917 — Cedar Lake Will Be Hard Hit By Prohibition [ARTICLE]

Cedar Lake Will Be Hard Hit By Prohibition

Lake county which has been decidedly a “wet” oasis on Sundays for thousands of thirsty tourists and joyriders from Chicago and elsewhere, will bar its doors to this class of visitors when the Indiana prohibition law goes into effect. More than 200 road houses and “wet goods" empor-iums-,-run especially for Sunday visito.s, will be forced out of business. Fish resorts and chicken dinner palaces, built up at big expense, * and whicn have in the last few summers reaped small fortunes, will go into the discard. On the Lake Michigan shore, at Cedar Lake, Wolf Lake, Lake George and along the Kankakee river in Lake county, and at the Porter, LaPorte and St. Joseph country resorts and summer holsteries, state-wide prohibition will be a blow. Chicago resort keepers have invested email fortunes in the fish and chicken cabaret establishments just across the state line in Indiana, and all of them will pass out of existence in 1918. In Hammond alone there are 200 licensed liquor vending places, many of them occupying the moat prominent corners in town, whose proprietors are wondering what they will do. In northern Indiana it is estimated there are at least 600 establishments where liquor is sold which are patronized freely by Chicago autoists and transcontinental tourists. At a given point the auto road leading from Chicago into Hammond tabulators have counted 15,000 automobiles passing on a single Sunday in summer. Fully half of these stop at liquor resorts. The receipts at the Hammond Beach Inn bar last summer on many a Sunday reached from $1,500 to $2,000. At one Cedar Lake hotel it was customary to serve 1,000 chicken dinners a day to autoists.