Wednesday, February 21, 2018

Distilling, Rum Running in Old Trap Section of Camden County, 1935


“Where Big Liquor Biz Is Still Going On,” from the Elizabeth City Independent, Feb. 8, 1935

Distilling and rum-running operations on a large scale continue unabated in the Old Trap section of Camden County, according to reports of reliable, law-abiding citizens who live on the highway between Old Trap and Shawboro.

It is the Indiantown Road that the rum-runners use in transporting liquor to Norfolk and other Virginia points where North Carolina corn finds a ready market in competition with the green and blended higher priced goods purveyed by the ABC liquor stores.

A good citizen of the Indiantown neighborhood tells this newspaper that he and his family are afraid to venture on the road nights because of the heavy bootleg traffic. Heavy trucks and high powered automobiles going at terrific speed use the highway nightly in transporting materials to the stills in lower Camden and bringing out the finished product.

And Revenue officers complain that they are handicapped in catching the rum-runners because of inadequate transportation facilities. Under the former Prohibition laws, government agents could use cars confiscated from bootleggers and rum-runners. Under the regulations now in force they can do this, and the U.S. Treasury Department is slow in furnishing them new automobiles.


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