Dry Counties in America: Prohibition Never Completely Went Away

Most Americans learned that Prohibition ended in 1933.

It did.

But prohibition did not.

When the Twenty-first Amendment was ratified on December 5, 1933, it repealed the Eighteenth Amendment and ended national Prohibition. It did not, however, require every place in America to begin selling liquor again. Instead, much of the authority to regulate alcohol returned to the states, and many states allowed counties, cities, and other local jurisdictions to decide for themselves.

That is why, nearly a century later, America still has dry counties.

And Arkansas has more of them than any other state.

Dry America Is Older Than Prohibition

The idea of a dry county did not begin with national Prohibition.

Long before the Eighteenth Amendment took effect in 1920, the temperance movement had been working town by town and county by county. States adopted “local option” laws that allowed communities to prohibit liquor sales without requiring the entire state to do the same.

The movement was remarkably successful. By 1906, more than half of the counties in the United States and about 60 percent of its towns were under some form of prohibition. The Anti-Saloon League deliberately pursued this strategy, drying up communities one election at a time before turning its attention toward statewide and eventually national prohibition.

So when national Prohibition arrived, much of America was already dry.

And when national Prohibition disappeared, many of those local restrictions simply remained.

What Does “Dry” Actually Mean?

This is where things get complicated.

We tend to use three words:

Wet generally means alcoholic beverages can be legally sold under ordinary state and local licensing laws.

Dry generally means the sale of alcoholic beverages is prohibited.

Moist is everything in between.

And there is a lot of “in between.”

A county might prohibit liquor stores but allow beer. It might permit alcohol by the drink in restaurants but prohibit package sales. A dry county might contain a wet city. Restaurants or private clubs may receive special permits. Some states treat beer, wine and distilled spirits differently.

That means there is no single national government list where someone can simply add up a column labeled “dry counties.” The National Alcohol Beverage Control Association notes that hundreds of American localities still have either complete or partial restrictions on alcohol sales.

Even the word “county” does not cover everything. Alaska, for example, has boroughs rather than counties, and while its boroughs are wet, a number of individual communities prohibit alcohol. Other states allow towns or municipalities to make decisions independent of the surrounding county.

So any national count depends upon what you decide qualifies as dry.

So How Many Dry Counties Are Left?

Using a strict definition — counties that still prohibit alcohol sales rather than the much larger number with some restrictions — a national survey published in August 2026 identified 47 dry counties in the United States.

They were concentrated in just eight states:

Arkansas had 29.

Kentucky had 6.

Mississippi had 5.

Texas had 3.

Florida, North Carolina, South Dakota and Tennessee each had one.

That means Arkansas alone accounts for well over half of America’s remaining completely dry counties under that definition.

But those numbers need an asterisk.

Mississippi is a perfect example of why.

The Mississippi Department of Revenue currently identifies 34 of its 82 counties as dry for hard liquor and 36 as dry for beer and light wine. Yet many of those counties contain municipalities or special areas where some alcohol sales are legal. Under the stricter national definition that excludes these “moist” situations, only five Mississippi counties make the completely dry list.

Both numbers can therefore be correct. They are simply answering different questions.

The Dry County Is Slowly Disappearing

The long-term trend is pretty clear.

Dry counties are becoming wet far more often than wet counties are becoming dry.

Texas may provide the best example. In 2003, Texas still had 51 completely dry counties. By March 2025, only three of the state’s 254 counties were completely dry. Local-option elections steadily changed the map over those two decades.

Kentucky has followed much the same path.

As recently as 2022, ten Kentucky counties reportedly had no legal form of alcohol sales. Allen County voted wet in 2023. Knott County followed in 2024, and voters in Menifee and Morgan counties also approved alcohol sales later that year. The strict national count is now down to six dry Kentucky counties.

Arkansas has moved in the same direction, although much more slowly. Hot Spring and Polk counties voted wet in 2022, joining other Arkansas counties that had abandoned dry status in earlier elections. Arkansas nevertheless still has 29 dry counties, making it easily the country’s largest remaining concentration.

Why Stay Dry?

There isn’t one answer.

In some communities, opposition to alcohol remains strongly tied to religious and cultural traditions. For others, the argument is about public safety, alcohol abuse or simply maintaining the character of the community.

There is also inertia.

A county that became dry generations ago normally stays that way until someone organizes a petition, gathers the required signatures and puts the question before voters. Doing nothing leaves the existing law in place.

That is an important point in discussions about dry counties. A county’s dry status does not necessarily mean its voters recently went to the polls and voted against alcohol sales. In many places, the original decision was made decades ago and has simply never been successfully reversed.

There can be economic interests involved as well.

Research on Arkansas local-option elections found an unusual political alliance that economists sometimes call “bootleggers and Baptists.” Churches and religious organizations may oppose alcohol sales for moral reasons, while liquor stores located just across the county line may oppose legalization for an entirely different reason: customers from the dry county are already driving to them.

Different motives. Same side of the ballot.

Dry Does Not Mean Nobody Drinks

This may be the biggest misconception about dry counties.

A dry county is generally a place where alcohol cannot be sold under normal circumstances. It does not mean nobody living there drinks.

Residents may purchase alcohol in a neighboring county. Restaurants may operate under special permits. Private clubs may serve members. Depending upon state law, people may legally possess alcohol purchased elsewhere.

That creates an interesting question: Does making a county dry actually reduce the problems associated with alcohol?

The research is not especially tidy.

One Kentucky study found lower rates of alcohol-related crashes and DUI arrests in dry counties. Another study found that the proportion of alcohol-related crashes was similar in wet and dry counties and raised another possibility: people living in dry counties may simply drive farther to obtain alcohol, increasing the distance they travel after drinking.

In other words, drawing a dry line around a county does not build a wall around it.

And Then There Is Arkansas

This is where the national story becomes very local for us.

Pope County is part of a system that stretches back well over a century. The basic idea that local voters should decide whether alcohol can be sold in their community predates national Prohibition itself.

Arkansas is now the standout.

Of the 47 completely dry counties identified nationally in the August 2026 survey, 29 are in Arkansas. That is about 62 percent of the total.

Think about that for a moment.

More than 3,000 counties and county-equivalent jurisdictions in the United States exist, yet almost two-thirds of the counties still classified as completely dry under this strict definition are right here in Arkansas.

That doesn’t mean Arkansas is alcohol-free. Far from it. Dry counties can have restaurants and private clubs operating under permitted exceptions—and the laws there allow just about any restaurant to serve alcohol if it has a private club permit, and Arkansans routinely cross county lines to make purchases.

What it does mean is that Arkansas has held onto the old local-option system longer and more extensively than almost anywhere else in America.

Prohibition Ended. Local Option Didn’t.

The saloons did not all reopen on December 6, 1933.

What really happened was that America abandoned one national answer to the alcohol question and returned to thousands of local answers.

Over the generations, most of those communities have gradually voted wet. The dry areas that once covered enormous portions of the country have steadily contracted until the completely dry county has become relatively rare.

But it has not disappeared.

In 2026, there are still places where a political decision made by voters — sometimes voters many generations ago — determines whether someone can open a liquor store, whether a supermarket can sell beer, or whether a restaurant can serve a glass of wine.

So Prohibition is gone.

Its grandchildren are still with us.

And more of them live in Arkansas than anywhere else in America.