SALT LAKE CITY - Utah lawmakers on Thursday approved the most sweeping changes to the state's liquor laws in 40 years in an effort to boost tourism and make the state appear a little less odd.

On the final day of the session, the Legislature eliminated the state's private club system, which requires customers to fill out an application and pay a fee for the right to enter a bar.

Bars can open their doors to the public July 1.

"This is huge," said Piper Down bar owner Dave Morris, who lobbied lawmakers to eliminate private clubs. "This was the worst of our liquor laws. Now we don't have the quirkiest liquor laws in the country anymore. The problem with it before is I couldn't even get people in my door to explain how to get a drink."

Bartenders in restaurants will also soon be allowed to serve cocktails directly over bar counters instead of walking around them.

Utah is the only state in the country with either law.

Currently, a partition usually made of glass known as a "Zion Curtain" separates bartenders from customers. The term is a nod to the state's religious history as the Land of Zion to members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. About 60 percent of Utah's population and between 80 percent and 90 percent of lawmakers are Mormon, a religion that tells its members to shun alcohol.

"A magnificent, monumental, history-making piece of legislation," Senate President Michael Waddoups, R-Taylorsville, told lawmakers Thursday after giving the measure its final approval.

Just as it happened the night before in the House, lawmakers in the Senate gave a rare round of applause to the bill's passage as some said "I'll drink to that." The bill passed unanimously in the Senate, and 65-5 in the House.

Gov. Jon Huntsman, a practicing Mormon, said Thursday he'll sign the bill into law, possibly at a bar.

"We're very sensitive to travel and tourism," he said. "We're a fair-minded people in Utah and want to keep pace with the times."

In exchange for the looser liquor laws, the state's DUI laws will become more strict and anyone who looks younger than 35 will have their driver's licenses scanned before entering a bar to make sure they're 21 or older and their ID is real.

Information obtained through the scan will be kept at bars for seven days and law enforcement can inspect it in the event of a DUI or crash.

The Utah Hospitality Association, which represents the state's bar industry, reluctantly agreed to the use of scanners, which will cost bars about $800. The association had been pushing for the private club system's demise and was prepared to take it to a vote of the people through an initiative if lawmakers didn't come to an agreement.

Bars have long complained that memberships are an unnecessary hassle that only annoy customers and distract bouncers who they say have bigger things to worry about than membership forms.

However, several morality groups, conservative lawmakers and Mothers Against Drunk Driving's Utah chapter had contended that memberships reduced underage drinking and drunken driving because they made getting into multiple bars in a single day expensive and time consuming.

The deal reached Thursday, however, had largely put those concerns to rest.

Besides tougher DUI penalties, the bill also calls for redefining what it means to be intoxicated in a restaurant. Bars and restaurants have warned that the new law's definition is too broad and could be abused by state agents, but they've been promised that agents will receive training to ensure consistency.

Under the bill, intoxicated is defined in part as a person who "exhibits plain and easily observed outward manifestations of behavior or physical signs produced by the over consumption of an alcoholic beverage."

The new definition was put in place because of a Utah Supreme Court ruling in October that said simply being drunk is not a crime. The court ruled that to be legally intoxicated, authorities had to find a reasonable likelihood that a drunk person was a danger to himself or others, and that being drunk in and of itself isn't a threat.

That standard would still apply to criminal cases, but bars could be punished for serving someone who meets a lesser standard of intoxication.

While the bill calls for tearing down the Zion Curtain in existing restaurants, it also creates a new incarnation of it in new restaurants. Some conservative lawmakers, including the bill's sponsor, Sen. John Valentine, R-Orem, worry that children will want to begin drinking alcohol if they see it poured in a restaurant.

New restaurants will be required to mix cocktails out of the view of customers, something the Utah Restaurant Association says will ultimately keep many chain restaurants out of the state.

The requirement is an effort to return Utah to a time when it was illegal to display liquor bottles in restaurants. Advertising liquor in any form - whether on menus or with neon signs - was banned until a federal court ordered the state to change in 2001.

Huntsman called hiding the preparation of drinks a step backward, but said it could have been worse.

"It's certainly better than a 10-foot wall. I mean at one point you had a 10-foot wall or a floor to ceiling arrangement and that to my mind would have been a 'three steps back' scenario, where it's not even worth doing if the world's going to write about, you know, a wall. Then you don't get any credit for what we ought to be getting credit for and that's forward movement for the state," Huntsman said.

The private club system as it's known today and the Zion Curtain got their start 40 years ago. At the urging of the Mormon church, voters in 1968 killed an initiative to allow the sale of liquor by the drink in restaurants.

Subsequent changes to state law and federal court rulings combined to mold Utah's liquor laws into their current form.

The Mormon church still wields plenty of influence in the state and has been a key party in the negotiations over the changes in liquor laws. Not once did the church publicly oppose eliminating private clubs, giving many lawmakers the freedom to seriously consider changes without fear of alienating many of their constituents.