Archaeologists have discovered remains of a 1920s moonshine that may have been part of the once illegal drinking operation of notorious gangster Al Capone.
Researchers at the University of Tennessee found barrels, cinder blocks, a garden hose, and other artifacts in ‘Hell Hole Swamp’ outside Charleston, South Carolina.
The abandoned operation is said to have been led by Benjamin Villeponteaux, an infamous bootlegger who smuggled liquor out of the state for Capone.
Villeponteaux was eventually killed in a shootout, but experts believe rival bootlegs have taken over the operation for their own illegal businesses.
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Volunteers trudging through Hell Hole Swamp in South Carolina’s Lowcountry discovered the remains of a moonshine they believe belonged to one of Al Capone’s bootleggers
The artifacts were discovered in Hell Hole Swamp, located in South Carolina’s Francis Marion National Forest in Berkeley County, about 30 miles from Charleston.
Katherine Parker, a PhD student at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, has been researching illegal distillation in the region since 2018.
Moonshine stills in South Carolina date back to the colonial era, Parker said in a 2018 report.
During Prohibition, Hell Hole Swamp was home to some of the largest operations in the country.
Researchers found barrels, cinder blocks, a garden hose, and other artifacts from a 1920s moonshine surgery.
Due to the arcane nature of 1920s moonshine operations and a lack of interest from academics, few sites have been formally researched or documented
However, due to the mysterious nature of the work and the lack of interest from academics, few sites have been formally researched or documented.
“ A lot of archaeologists tend to write these off because they think they are, you know, too recent to really bother, or because there’s too much documented evidence that we don’t have to do archeology, ” Parker said. to The Post and Courier. .
Parker has found distilleries in the forest before.
In November, she led a team of volunteers back into the forest, where they found seven more stills.
Last month they trudged to Hell Hole Swamp and found a metal barrel and hose, cinder blocks and other debris.
Cinderblocks were often laid out to keep it rigid from the ground so that the mash could be heated from below
An architectural historian dated the cinder blocks to the 1920s, based on their size and composition.
A 3-meter well that provided the operation was also uncovered in the area, along with sheet metal, charcoal, and other signs of heating elements used to heat the mash in the kettle.
Unlike most stills, this one was not located near a creek or other water, which is why Villeponteaux made the wheel possible.
An architectural historian dated the cinder blocks at the site to the 1920s, based on their size and composition
During Prohibition, Berkeley County was nationally notorious as a hotbed of illegal distillation: in 1929, pro-moderate governor John Gardiner Richard declared the county “ a festering sore in South Carolina. ”
Hell Hole Swamp was one of the largest suppliers of bootleg liquor to Prohibition-era Chicago, according to Charleston magazine, while Capone visited the area in a chic limousine to check operations.
In 1930, the Charleston Daily Mail wrote that the swamp had “a scent of liquor that smelled through the Southeast.”
Archaeologists believe they have discovered the remains of a moonshine that still belongs to Benjamin Villeponteaux, an infamous bootlegger for Al Capone (pictured) in the 1920s and 30s.
The volunteers found the remains less than a mile from Ben Villeponteaux’s home. Stills were often located near an operator’s property, Parker reported, “to protect the still from accidental discovery.” Pictured: Vessels used in moonshine surgery
Corn whiskey would be transported out of the swamp, loaded into rail cars, and shipped to the Windy City.
Parker’s team discovered that artifacts were found less than a mile from the location of the home of Benjamin Villeponteaux, one of the largest moonshiners in the country, leading her to believe the operation was his.
Stills were often located near operator property, Parker found in her research, “to protect the still from accidental discovery and the still operator from additional intrusion charges.”
The Villeponteaux clan was one of the few families in the region successful enough to pay the authorities to look the other way.
“These operators were made up of some of the oldest families in Berkeley County,” Parker wrote. They competed for control “through networks controlled by Al Capone himself, and the frequent, violent clashes between the two rivals led to the provincial nickname” Bloody Berkeley. ”
Villeponteaux was killed in a shootout with the McKnight family, but Parker believes rival bootleggers likely continued to use his still after his death.
It is not clear how long this particular setup was in use.
The ban was repealed in 1933, but high taxes on alcohol in South Carolina kept the moonshiners in business for years.
Although the ban was repealed in 1933, smuggling continued in the Lowcounty for years. Pictured: Government officials who are still outside of Chattanooga, Tennessee, in addition to their jobs
Abandoned liquor stills are often mistaken for heaps of waste, Parker says, but they have several distinguishing features, including an oven or firebox for heating and stones or blocks to rest it on.
There may also be broken stones or glass jars, nails, rivets, fragments of sheet metal, rubber pipes or hoses, drums or raceways, buckets and even clothing and used ammunition.
Parker continues to comb the forest and hopes to find some of the bootleggers’ personal belongings to get a clearer picture of who they were.
Local volunteers have also shared stories of family members who were moonshiners, some of whom had been enslaved.
They said, ‘Yeah, you know, a lot of our ancestors made alcohol … made moonshine here too,’ Parker told the newspaper.
“Much smaller operations than maybe some of the white planter families who made moonshine, but still a big part of that culture.”