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♪ (electric guitar) ♪

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Travel around the states and you often
see where true believers made

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their marks on the map. You also
notice how different religious beliefs

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affect us indirectly in more ways
than you might think.

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Let me ask you this. There are all
kinds of little quirky laws.

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Do they call them blue laws
in some states?

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>> Yeah.
>> Well you can't buy beer until noon

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on Sunday, unless you're in a restaurant.

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>> You can't buy liquor on Sundays.

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>> Check out some of 
the blue laws on the map.

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14 states forbid liquor sales on
Sunday. They're scattered across

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the country, like Connecticut, 
Mississippi and Montana.

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Illinois outlaws two-for-one drinks
while Massachusetts bans happy hours.

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So where do these blue laws come from?

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They started with the Puritans 
in New England.

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But Puritan blue laws were aimed
at controlling morality, kind of like

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a set of God's rules for upright behavior.

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They didn't apply to booze.

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Puritans in fact drank more
beer than water.

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Laws against alcohol really took off
after the Civil War,

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and not in Massachusetts, 
but back in Kansas.

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I'm in Lawrence, Kansas, a town
that was burned by people from Missouri

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back in the days of the Holy War.

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Lawrence, Kansas wasn't founded
by farmers or frontiersmen.

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It was settled by anti-slavery activists
from New England, and that's why

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this main drag through town here
is called Massachusetts Street.

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When the religious New Englanders
came to do God's work in Kansas,

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they didn't stop with the battle
over slavery. After the civil war,

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they took on the evils of alcohol.

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Kansas led what's called 
the temperance movement.

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It banned the sale of alcohol in 1881.

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The war on booze spread, until
every state on the map was under

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federal prohibition, but it was a
lot worse here 100 years ago,

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when booze was illegal. Religious
zealots had an ax to grind.

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Carrie Nation, a Kansas crusader,
liked to bust up bars with a hatchet.

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The whole state was officially
dry until 1948, long after the

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rest of the country fell off the wagon.

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Before Prohibition, Kansas had 130
breweries. Today, there are about

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a dozen. Today, Kansas still has 19
dry counties, and it's not alone.

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If you trace dry counties across the
map, you'll see how religion shapes

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the states in new ways. The South
is truly parched, but don't be fooled.

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Even northern states that look wet
are dotted with blue laws.

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So that's how religious activists took a
whack at alcohol, started a movement

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in Kansas, and gave the states whole
new shapes.