South Carolina archaeologists have discovered the remains of a 1920s era moonlight still, it may have been run by one of Al Capone’s criminal associates.
While digging in a wooded region known as the “Hell Hole Swamp” (part of the Francis Marion National Forest in South Carolina) outside Charlottesville, the researchers discovered a metal barrel, a green garden hose, concrete blocks and various pieces of wood. scrap, according to South Carolina’s Post and Courier.
Despite their heterogeneous appearance, these artifacts are probably reminiscent of an illegal liquor distillation operation run by a famous local smuggler and Capone associate named Benjamin Villeponteaux, said Katherine Parker, a graduate student at the University of Tennessee Knoxville who led the expedition to Hell Hole Swamp, as reported by Post and Courier.
“As archaeological sites, distilled or broken distilleries are often confused with modern dumps,” said Parker wrote on her website. “However, there are several key signatures that can be used to distinguish them.”
Concrete blocks are one of those signatures. Parker called an architecture historian to analyze the size and materials of the blocks and found that they dated to the 1920s. According to Parker, these bricks probably supported a “submarine style“liquor distillate, in which hundreds of pounds of rye, barley, sugar and water were lifted over the fire and brought to a boil in a metal container. A separate appliance, connected by a hose, would have removed the vapors from the alcohol and condensed them into a liquid again.
This newly discovered still is just one of several in the Hell Hole swamp that archeologists associate with Villeponteaux. According to Parker, the local smuggler owned a property near the forest and is believed to have worked with Capone to help the infamous gangster get illegal liquor out of South Carolina during Prohibition.
A 1926 newspaper article reported that Villeponteaux was one of three men killed during a bloody shootout with a rival smuggler gang called the McKnight family. However, the Hell Hole swamp alcohol distilleries may have been used for many years after Villeponteaux’s death, and perhaps even after Prohibition was repealed in 1933, according to the Post and Courier. South Carolina taxed legal liquor at $ 4 a gallon, making it one of the highest state taxes in the country; smuggling continued to thrive and the state became a stronghold of illegal beverage production, the newspaper reported.
Originally published on Live Science.