Federal Prohibition Agents Threaten Blockade to Stop Flow of Moonshine, May 21, 1926

To Starve Out East Lake’s Moonshiners.. . Federal Prohibition Agents Threaten to Blockade All Approaches to the Source of Eastern North Carolina’s Greatest Liquor Supply

And now it is proposed to bottle up East Lake, fast U.S. Coast Guard rum runners carrying machine guns and armed crews to patrol the outlets of East Lake and Mill Tail Creek in Dare County and stop and search every craft coming out of those waters. This newspaper has inside information that this is the next step in the government’s fight on the moonshine business of that wettest of all wet regions in Eastern North Carolina.

The spectacular raid on the East Lake distillers two weeks ago convinced Capt. McDuffie and his men that raiding the East Lake distilleries is not enough. Capt. McDuffie and 11 men armed to the teeth swooped down on East Lake with 31 warrants for the operators of 16 distilleries. They got only eight of the 16 stills and the moonshiners stole three of them back before the raiders got away from East Lake. They didn’t get any of the operators of the stills and came back with their 31 warrants unserved.

Thousands of gallons of liquor and tons of sugar and meal wee spirited away before the officers got on the ground. Let any strange craft appear at the entrances of either East Lake or Mill Tail Creek and word immediately goes down the line to every distiller to move out.

And so it is proposed now to put two fast U.S. Coast Guard rum runners in Alligator River, one to guard Mill Tail Creek, the other to guard the ne outlet of East Lake and South Lake.

There is no other way for liquor to move out of the East Lake region except thru one of the two outlets indicated. There is no way for the distillers of the East Lake region to get their supplies of corn meal, sugar and jugs except thru the mouths of East Lake and Mill Tail Creek. Transportation by mainland is impossible because there is no mainland; the whole country is one bewildering and boggy morass thru which men just do not pass.

It is the opinion of Federal prohibition enforcement officers that the only way to stop the wholesale manufacture of liquor in the East Lake region is to bottle the region up, forcing the distillers to give up their business and quit the country when they can no longer move and sell their product.

An authentic map of the East Lake region, reproduced in this newspaper to-day by courtesy of Capt. A.G. McDuffie, chief of the Federal prohibition enforcement division of Eastern North Carolina, shows the location of the East Lake distilleries and how effectively they may be bottled up; provided of course the Coast Guard patrol doesn’t sell out to the distillers.

From the front page of The Independent, Elizabeth City, N.C., Friday, May 21, 1926

You can see the map marked with locations of illegal stills at:

newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn83025812/1926-05-21/ed-1/seq-1/