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.

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. The Maine law, passed in 1851 in Maine, was among the first statutory implementations of the developing temperance movement in the United States.

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Illinois, Rhode Island, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and New York; however, all but one were repealed. 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. 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.

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. 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.See U.S. Const. art. V. By the end of February 1919, only three states remained as hold-outs to ratification: New Jersey, Connecticut and Rhode Island.

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, 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. 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."Prohibition", The Mississippi Encyclopedia, Mississippi Humanities Council, last updated April 14, 2018. Retrieved August 18, 2025.

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.

State Dry date Repeal date Retail salesOn-premiseBeerLiquor Maine Anti Saloon League Yearbook, 1919Jacks, David S., Krishna Pendakur, and Hitoshi Shigeoka. "Infant Mortality and the Repeal of Federal Prohibition", Simon Fraser University, September 2020. Vermont Kansas Iowa North Dakota Prohibition in Mandan South Dakota Oklahoma Georgia Mississippi Farrington, Sam S. "Signing of Beer Bill Starts Flow Over Mississippi", Jackson Clarion-Ledger, February 27, 1934, front page and page seven. North Carolina Patrick Horn, "The Temperance Movement in North Carolina"A History of Liquor-by-the-Drink Legislation in North Carolina Tennessee Tennessee Encyclopedia, "The Temperance in Tennessee" Alabama Ohio Oregon West Virginia Washington Montana Nebraska Nevada New Hampshire New Mexico Indiana 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 Michigan Florida Kentucky Date the state prohibition law was passed. Texas TEXAS ALLOWS SALES OF LIQUOR BY DRINKTEXAS GETS LEGAL BEER.; Brew Flows After 14 Years as State Law Becomes Effective., 15 September 1933 Virginia Utah South Carolina Idaho Colorado Arkansas Arizona Wyoming Alaska A short history of alcohol and bars in Alaska

See also Dry county Alcoholic beverage control state List of alcohol laws of the United States by state Alcohol prohibition in India

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