Prohibition began in the US 100 years ago today — this map shows how many bars per capita there are in each state

Andy Kiersz

January 16, 2020 2:46 PM

Prohibition, the 13-year-long nationwide ban on alcoholic beverages in the US, began on January 16, 1920.

bars per 100k population

To commemorate the anniversary, we used data from the US Census Bureau to estimate the number of bars in each state, adjusted for population.
The northernmost Great Plains and Mountain states had the highest number of bars per capita according to the Census figures, while states across the South tended to have fewer.
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A hundred years ago today, the 18th Amendment to the US Constitution came into effect , banning the production and sale of alcoholic beverages across the country. Prohibition lasted for 13 years before the 21st Amendment ended the ban, making alcohol legal again.

To commemorate the start of Prohibition, we put together the above map showing how many bars each state has, adjusted by population. We took the number of bars formally, establishments in the drinking places (alcoholic beverages) industry in each state from the Census Bureau's 2017 County Business Patterns statistics, which track the number of businesses and employment levels in hundreds of industries across the country.

It's worth noting that establishments in this industry are places that exclusively or primarily serve alcohol as their main business restaurants or cafes that serve alcoholic drinks in addition to mostly serving food are in a different industry category.

Since larger states will naturally tend to have more establishments in any particular industry than smaller states, we adjusted those figures by each state's 2017 population, according to the Bureau's annual population estimates .

The northernmost Great Plains and Mountain states had the highest number of bars per capita according to the Census figures, while states across the South tended to have fewer.