A few years ago, I ran across a reference for a reported moonshine still in a North Georgia gated community. Initially, I had doubts about the location. However, this was before I knew much about moonshining. I walked up a draw (def - a terrain feature formed by two parallel ridges or spurs with low ground in between them) about 500 yards uphill into the woods. There were remnants of an ephemeral stream about six inches from the abandoned rock furnace. The rock furnace looked like a small circular fire pit made of rocks with two noticeable differences. First, the hole on the top was far smaller than a traditional firepit. This is where the copper still would go. Second, there was a secondary hole on the side of the furnace facing the stream. This is where the logs would go that would burn inside the rock furnace. Found in the opening were two three-foot-long iron bars. The bars are two inches wide and a quarter inch thick.
I immediately checked the county maps for local roads. Up until as recently as the 1940s the maps and aerial photographs showed the roads virtually ended near where the still is located. Additionally, the draw was in a bowl created by a cluster of mountains: Sharptop, Sassafras, and Denny Top Mountains.
Prior to the 1950s, the area had historically been known to be the haunt of local moonshiners. A road at the end of nowhere, at the end of the southern Appalachians seemed to be the perfect hiding place. What I called an ephemeral stream, the old corn whiskey makers would call a branch. They would fashion the furnace from the rocks on the surrounding land. They will build it halfway up a slope, rather than near the top, to prevent the smoke from the operation from becoming visible to outsiders.
The site isn't far from the only nearby road shown on the 1884 topographic map for Suwanee. Interestingly, this road ended at the home site of one of the infamous Honest Man's Friend and Protector Group, the vigilante group who committed arsons against the informants who gave information to the revenuers. Thomas and Eli Fields lived in the valley just east of Sharptop Mountain (where the present-day Young Life Camp is)
The 1903 map drawn by J.W. Henley shows the still site closer to a trail that used to connect to two or three of the remote houses in the area.
As a point of interest, many of the local families of the Grassy Knob District of Pickens County earned extra money through making peach and apple moonshine. There were orchards located nearby and lots of streams and tributaries from Long Swamp Creek as a water source.
After the Civil War, the economy of southern Appalachia was tough. Taxation aimed itself at one of the few ways people could earn a profitable living. The free labor of the slaves was gone. There were no major industries in the county, compared to those in the northern states.
Many of the original settlers of Pickens County were of Scottish descent. They brought the Old World skillsets of whiskey-making with them. And they would be damned if the revenuers from Atlanta or the local sheriffs would stop their profiteering.
As a result, Moonshine Wars broke out across North Georgia in the 1870s. The situation became so dire the United States Army was called in. The consequence of the battles between the Army, the Reveneurs, and the Moonshiners, left the United States with a prohibition against having the Army interfere in civilian affairs. The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 was born.
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