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Whiskey Still Industry National Register of Historic Places Historic Preservation Activities
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Whiskey Still Industry Farmers of the Catoctin Mountain area were faced with a number of problems in marketing the crops they produced. The most profitable market for their goods were in the more populated areas of cities and towns. In the days before good highways and before rails had been laid, the rugged mountains presented a barrier for horse drawn transportation. Products such as grain, meat and lumber were too heavy to be transported to the more profitable markets in the larger cities. Corn and rye were also very bulky to transport but when converted to whiskey, they became a better profit.
While the average horse was capable of hauling only 4 bushels of corn at a time, the same horse could haul the equivalent of 24 bushels if the grain was manufactured into whiskey. The liquid whiskey occupied less space and was easier to carry to market. The price of whiskey depended on a number of other factors as well. The better the grade of corn, the better the whiskey. The more plentiful the spring water happened to be, the better the whiskey produced with it. Finally the more skilled the distiller, the finer the blend of whiskey he could manufacture. Conversion of rye and corn into liquor probably began in Frederick County with the harvest of the first crop, somewhere around 1734. Until Congress passed the 1791 Excise Tax, every farm probably had it's own still. For the next 128 years it was legal to own a still--provided you paid the tax. Not until the adoption of the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution was possession of a still an offense.
The problem with the 1791 Excise Tax was that it took the profit out of making liquor. For mountain people, the liquor concentration of rye and corn was the most practical way to get crops to market. So rather than pay the tax they went underground, operating by the light of the moon.
The Blue Blazes Whiskey StillIt was hot, that July day, even up on Catoctin Mountain . And quiet. Nothing moved, save a cloud of dust stirred up by a local car bouncing along the dirt road through Harmon's Gap. Across a small woded bridge, the driver spied another road, hardly more than a lane. "This must be the place," he half whispered to his companion, "let's go." They parked, fished an empty jug from the back seat, and started into the woods. The road ran up the draw, paralleling the branch of Big Hunting Creek. Before they had gone a hundred yards they found themselves peering down the barrel of a blockader's rifle. "Where are yuh goin?" "We want to buy some liquor," the man with the jug answered. Instead they got free advice. "Yuh had better git out of here if yuh don't want to get shot!"
"Git" they did -- back to a second car with four deputy sheriffs parked down the road. That was on the last day of July 1929 -- the raid on the Blue Blazes Still was starting.
It was a large commercial operation, a "steamer" still. More than 25,000 gallons of mash were found in 13 vats of 2,000 gallon capacity each. Today another still sits on the banks of Distillery Run. It's quite different than the set up found that day. The new Blue Blazes still is more typical of the smaller moonshine still of an earlier day. Even more different -- visitors are welcome -- not challenged. Park Rangers give talks at the still on Sundays in June and September, please write the park for the current calendar of events for specific dates and times.
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