ND: More bars per resident than any other state

North Dakota: Where there are more bars per capita than there are bars.

Come again, you say?

A nifty map by Kyle Potter of the Forum of Fargo-Moorhead shows that our neighbors to the northwest, all 683,932 of them, could visit 422 taverns in the state (if they were over 21, of course). That means there’s one bar for every 1,621 people in the state.

“The joke was, you have to have as many bars as churches – if not more,” the general manager of a downtown Fargo told the Forum.

In Minnesota, by contrast, there more than twice as many bars: 1,014. But there are also nearly eight times as many people: 5.3 million.

One reason for the disparity, the Forum reports: In North Dakota, liquor licenses are handed out by local municipalities rather than the state.