Dry state

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Animated map of alcohol prohibition in the United States 1880 – 2025

A dry state was a state in the United States in which the manufacture, distribution, importation, and sale of alcoholic beverages was prohibited or tightly restricted. Some states, such as North Dakota, entered the United States as dry states, and others went dry after the passage of prohibition legislation or the Volstead Act. No state remains completely dry, but some states do contain dry counties.

Contents

Prior to the adoption of nationwide prohibition in 1920, state legislatures passed local option laws that allowed a county or township to go dry if it chose to do so. [1] The Maine law, passed in 1851 in Maine, was among the first statutory implementations of the developing temperance movement in the United States. [2]

Following Maine's lead, prohibition laws were soon passed in the states of Delaware, Ohio, Illinois, Rhode Island, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and New York; however, all but one were repealed. [3] The debate over prohibition increased in the United States during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century as the drys, including the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), the National Prohibition Party, the Anti-Saloon League, and others, continued to support temperance and prohibition legislation, while the wets opposed it. [3] By 1913 nine states had statewide prohibition and 31 others had local option laws, placing more than 50 percent of the United States population under some form of alcohol prohibition. [3]

Following two unsuccessful attempts at national prohibition legislation (one in 1913 and the other in 1915), Congress approved a resolution on December 19, 1917, to prohibit the manufacture, sale, transportation, and importation of alcoholic beverages in the United States. [4] The resolution was sent to the states for ratification and became the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. On January 8, 1918, Mississippi became the first state to ratify the amendment and on January 16, 1919, Nebraska became the 36th state to do so, securing its passage with the required three-fourths of the states. [5] By the end of February 1919, only three states remained as hold-outs to ratification: New Jersey, Connecticut and Rhode Island. [3]

The National Prohibition Act, also known as the Volstead Act, was enacted on October 18, 1919. Prohibition in the United States went into effect on January 17, 1920, [3] but quickly lost popularity as the illegal sale of alcohol flourished, leading to a growth in organized crime. Nationwide prohibition was repealed in 1933 with the passage of the Twenty-first Amendment on February 20 and its ratification on December 5. [6] The Twenty-first Amendment explicitly allowed states to continue banning alcohol as before, with the importation of alcohol into those states becoming a federal offense. However, most of these states repealed their own prohibition laws for the same reasons in the years that followed. The last "dry state" was Mississippi, which removed its statewide ban on the sale of alcohol in 1966. [7]

List of formerly dry states

This table lists the effective dates each state went dry and any dates of repeal that do not coincide with the end of national prohibition in 1933.

StateDry dateRepeal dateRef
Retail salesOn-premise
BeerLiquor
Maine 18511856 [8] [9] [10]
18581934
Vermont 18531902 [11]
Kansas November 23, 1880193719481987 [12] [13]
Iowa July 27, 18821894 [14] [15] [16] [17] [9] [10]
January 1, 19161934
North Dakota November 2, 1889October 22, 1933November 1936 [18]
South Dakota October 1, 18891896 [19] [20]
November 7, 19161933
Oklahoma September 17, 1907June 16, 1933April 7, 1959September 18, 1984 [21] [22]
Georgia January 1, 19081938 [23] [24]
Mississippi December 31, 1908February 26, 1934June 30, 1966 [a] [28] [13]
North Carolina January 1, 190919351937November 21, 1978 [13] [29] [30]
Tennessee July 1, 19091939 [13] [31]
Alabama July 1, 19151936 [13] [10]
Ohio May 27, 19191933 [9] [10]
Oregon January 1, 19161933 [13] [10]
West Virginia July 1, 19141934 [13] [10]
Washington January 1, 19161934 [13] [10]
Montana December 31, 19181934 [13] [10]
Nebraska May 1, 19171934 [13] [10]
Nevada December 16, 19181933 [9] [10]
New Hampshire May 1, 19181934 [9] [10]
New Mexico October 1, 19181933 [9] [10]
Indiana April 2, 19181933 [32] [9] [10]
Michigan April 30, 19181933 [13] [10]
Florida January 1, 19191934 [9] [10]
Kentucky November 1919 [33] 1934 [34] [10]
Texas June 26, 1918September 15, 19331935April 21, 1971 [35] [9] [36] [37]
Virginia November 1, 19161934 [13] [10]
Utah November 5, 19181934 [9] [10]
South Carolina December 31, 19151934 [13] [10]
Idaho January 1, 19161934 [13] [10]
Colorado January 1, 19161933 [13] [10]
Arkansas January 1, 19161933 [13] [10]
Arizona January 1, 19151933 [13] [10]
Wyoming June 30, 19191934 [9] [10]
Alaska January 1, 1918April 7, 1933May 1, 1934July 1, 1939 [9] [38]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ The repeal of the statewide ban did not immediately lead to the legalization of alcohol sales in any part of Mississippi. When the Alcohol Beverage Control Law took effect on July 1, 1966, the ban remained in place in all counties, but each county was permitted to hold its own referendum to decide whether to allow alcohol to be sold within its borders. [25] The first of these county-level votes were held on July 16, with Harrison and Washington counties approving the sale of alcohol by large majorities. [26] The first legal consumption of alcohol took place at the Broadwater Beach Hotel in Biloxi on July 27. [27]

References

  1. ↑ James H. Madison (1982). Indiana Through Tradition and Change: A History of the Hoosier State and Its People, 1920–1945. The History of Indiana. Vol. 5. Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society. p. 40.
  2. ↑ Henry Stephen Clubb (1856). The Maine Liquor Law: Its Origin, History, and Results, Including a Life of Hon. Neal Dow. Fowler and Wells, for the Maine Law Statistical Society. Retrieved 2013-10-23.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 Jane McGrew. "History of Alcohol Prohibition". National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse. Retrieved 2013-10-22.
  4. ↑ "Prohibition wins in Senate, 47 to 8" (PDF). New York Times. December 19, 1917. p. 6. Retrieved 2013-10-22.
  5. ↑ See U.S. Const. art. V.
  6. ↑ "Amendments 11–27". US National Archives.
  7. ↑ "Prohibition", The Mississippi Encyclopedia, Mississippi Humanities Council, last updated April 14, 2018. Retrieved August 18, 2025.
  8. ↑ Kat Eschner (2017-06-02). "Why Was Maine the First State to Try Prohibition?". Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved 2013-05-08.
  9. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Anti Saloon League Yearbook, 1919
  10. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 Jacks, David S., Krishna Pendakur, and Hitoshi Shigeoka. "Infant Mortality and the Repeal of Federal Prohibition", Simon Fraser University, September 2020.
  11. ↑ "Prohibition & Temperance". Champlain Valley National Heritage Partnership. Retrieved 2024-05-08.
  12. ↑ "Kansas Liquor Laws" (PDF). Kansas Legislative Research Department. February 24, 2003. Archived from the original (PDF) on October 22, 2013. Retrieved September 24, 2014.
  13. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 The Anti-Prohibition Manual: A Summary of Facts and Figures Dealing with Prohibition, 1917. Cincinnati, Ohio: National Association of Distillers and Wholesale Dealers. 1917. p.  8.
  14. ↑ "Prohibition Rule: Murder in Sioux City". Wild West Magazine. 12 June 2006. Retrieved 2013-03-27.
  15. ↑ "Original Gangsters: The Iowa City Beer Riots of 1884". Little Village Magazine. 26 March 2013. Retrieved 2013-03-27.
  16. ↑ "Sioux City's Prohibition Past Fascinates Historians". The Sioux City Journal. 2 October 2011. Retrieved 2013-03-27.
  17. ↑ "Beer Business Has Been In-and-Out Venture Here, but Whisky Has Flowed Freely Much of the Time". Sioux City Journal. 5 March 2012. Retrieved 2013-03-27.
  18. ↑ Prohibition in Mandan
  19. ↑ Vollan, Chuck. "Bone Dry" (PDF). South Dakota State Historical Society. 45 (Fall 2015): 189–227. Retrieved 15 May 2025.
  20. ↑ Ganz, Kevin. "The Bottle and the Ballot". sdpb.org. South Dakota Public Broadcasting. Retrieved 15 May 2025.
  21. ↑ Jimmie Franklin. "Prohibition". The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma history and culture. Retrieved 2024-05-10.
  22. ↑ "Prohibition is repealed". Oklahoma Digital Prairie. Retrieved 2024-05-10.
  23. ↑ Stephen Fowler (2018-03-08). "A Brief History of Alcohol (And the Lack Thereof) in the State of Georgia". Georgia Public Broadcasting. Retrieved 2024-05-12.
  24. ↑ Kaylynn Washnock (2020-07-20). "Prohibition in Georgia". New Georgia Encyclopedia. Retrieved 2024-05-12.
  25. ↑ "Prohibition Era Nears End", Bolivar Commercial , June 30, 1966, front page.
  26. ↑ Associated Press. "Two Counties Okay Liquor", Jackson Clarion-Ledger , July 17, 1966, front page and page 14A.
  27. ↑ Associated Press. "Whisky On Sale In Biloxi", Jackson Clarion-Ledger , July 27, 1966, front page and page 16A.
  28. ↑ Farrington, Sam S. "Signing of Beer Bill Starts Flow Over Mississippi", Jackson Clarion-Ledger , February 27, 1934, front page and page seven.
  29. ↑ Patrick Horn, "The Temperance Movement in North Carolina"
  30. ↑ A History of Liquor-by-the-Drink Legislation in North Carolina
  31. ↑ Tennessee Encyclopedia, "The Temperance in Tennessee"
  32. ↑ Passed in 1917, subsequent attempts to overturn the law failed in 1918, when a court ruled Indiana's statewide prohibition law as constitutional and the state went dry. See Jason S. Lantzer (2009). 'Prohibition is Here to Stay': The Reverend Edward S. Shumaker and the Dry Crusade in Indiana. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press. pp. 80–83. ISBN   978-0-268-03383-5.
  33. ↑ Date the state prohibition law was passed.
  34. ↑ Jim Warren (2011-10-18). "Revisiting Prohibition: Kentucky was ahead of the times". Lexington Herald-Leader. Retrieved 2013-10-01.
  35. ↑ The Anti-Prohibition Manual: A Summary of Facts and Figures Dealing with Prohibition, 1918. Cincinnati, Ohio: National Association of Distillers and Wholesale Dealers. 1918. p.  8.
  36. ↑ TEXAS ALLOWS SALES OF LIQUOR BY DRINK
  37. ↑ TEXAS GETS LEGAL BEER.; Brew Flows After 14 Years as State Law Becomes Effective., 15 September 1933
  38. ↑ A short history of alcohol and bars in Alaska
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