Cliffside Quiz
What is this?
A) Watering trough for Cliffside’s famous wild pony herd
B) What was left after the cannery exploded
C) Another jet plane crash
D) A moonshine still
The answer is D) A moonshine still. Lawmen discovered this one in 1955 near the old roller mill site. They arrested one man and did their best to destroy these tools of his trade. Hill’s Creek was a dandy source of water for a still, and, since the roller mill had burned down a couple of years earlier, it was a fairly isolated location.
Ben Humphries, who was a Rutherford County deputy sheriff for many years, says moonshiners would often (and may still) try to fool the law by erecting their stills far from any source of water, and run hidden hoses miles through the woods to the nearest stream.
Can you imagine drinking anything that came from this nasty apparatus?
Photo courtesy Evelyn Houser
