The Historical Society of Avon ParkAVON PARK, FL · EST. 1886
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Prohibition, Moonshine Stills, and Temperance Enforcement in Avon Park, 1886–1933

From its original survey in 1886 until the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment in 1933 and the subsequent local-option decades, Avon Park maintained a continuous legal and civic posture of liquor prohibition. The community began as a planned temperance colony, transitioned through county local-option dry mandates and statewide constitutional prohibition, and faced illicit distilling in the surrounding scrub and pine flatwoods.

The planned temperance colony, 1886–1895

When Oliver M. Crosby founded Avon Park in 1886, he marketed the townsite explicitly to Northern settlers as a moral, alcohol-free haven. In promotional publications and in the Florida Home Seeker, Crosby issued explicit warnings to prospective buyers:

“Mischief makers are not welcome; and above all, do not come to Avon Park if you must have strong drink or questionable entertainment. Do not come to sober up, or reform!”[wpa-1939][maxwell-1976]

Community sentiment enforced this restriction vigorously. In April 1895, following the devastating citrus freezes, a national press dispatch reported that liquor sales were entirely barred at Avon Park because the founder intended it as a moral settlement. When the pastor of the Union Congregational Church, the Rev. Mr. Robinson, admitted during a congregational debate that he smoked tobacco in his private study, anti-tobacco parishioners hanged him in effigy from a tree in front of his parsonage with the placard: “So may all ministers be served who use tobacco.”[dawson-1895-04-03]

County local option and statewide prohibition, 1898–1919

Under Article XIX of the Florida Constitution of 1885, counties were empowered to hold local-option elections to prohibit the sale of intoxicating liquors. DeSoto County, which encompassed Avon Park prior to 1921, voted dry in 1898, eliminating legal saloons and retail liquor establishments throughout the jurisdiction.

On 5 November 1918, Florida voters ratified an amendment to Article XIX of the state constitution establishing statewide prohibition, effective 1 January 1919—a full year before the federal Volstead Act and the Eighteenth Amendment took effect on 16 January 1920.

The Lake ravine still and the murder of John D. West, March 1920

Because legitimate commerce was outlawed, illicit distilling emerged in the secluded karst solution basins, ravines, and scrub hammocks surrounding Avon Park. The most severe local crime of the early Prohibition era occurred on Thursday, 25 March 1920, when eighty-year-old Avon Park farmer John D. West took his shotgun into the woods south of town to hunt small game and failed to return.[pgh-1920-04-08]

The following afternoon, his sons discovered his incinerated remains concealed in a ravine between two lakes approximately two miles south of Avon Park, near the road leading toward Sebring. Approximately seventy-five yards from the scene, investigators located an operational copper moonshine distillery, partially dismantled, with half a barrel of fermented mash (“buck”) remaining on site.[pgh-1920-04-08]

DeSoto County Sheriff Joe L. Dishong launched an extensive manhunt. Officers arrested Son Simpson, who confessed to assisting in burning the victim’s body and identified the shooter as still operator Ed Castello. Castello had fled Avon Park on the night of 31 March 1920, prompting Sheriff Dishong to circulate nationwide circulars describing him as a forty-five-year-old native of Georgia weighing two hundred pounds.[pgh-1920-04-15]

Federal enforcement and the Peter Brown case, 1929

Following the establishment of Highlands County in April 1921, county sheriffs (including Avon Park resident Oscar E. Wolff, who served from 1929 to 1933) and municipal marshals patrolled local roadways. However, major transportation corridors—notably the cross-ridge highway connecting Avon Park with Wauchula in Hardee County—became primary avenues for bootleg transportation, bringing federal Prohibition Bureau agents into the district.

On 1 November 1929, in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida at Tampa, a federal jury tried Peter Brown, proprietor of a gasoline filling station situated on the road between Avon Park and Wauchula. Federal prohibition agents testified that they had intercepted Brown’s automobile after detecting the odor of alcoholic spirits emanating from the vehicle and arrested him after he resisted. Although defense witnesses testified that federal agents had made no mention of an alcohol odor during the initial preliminary hearing, the jury convicted Brown of illegal liquor possession and resisting federal officers.[gaceta-1929-11-02]

Post-repeal local option

Following the national repeal of Prohibition with the Twenty-First Amendment in December 1933 and Florida’s constitutional revision in November 1934, Highlands County voted under Article XIX local option to retain dry county status. Commercial package liquor stores and licensed dispensing were strictly controlled, maintaining the anti-liquor regulatory framework established by the town’s pioneer settlers for decades into the mid-twentieth century.

References

Where this comes from

Evidence
corroborated — More than one independent source agrees.
Review
unverified — Drafted from sources but not yet checked by a volunteer.
Rights
society

Sources

  1. The Dawson News (Dawson, Ga.), The Filthy Weed — A Florida Pastor Hung in Effigy Because He Smoked, The Dawson News (Dawson, Ga.), 3 April 1895, page 6 (1895)
  2. The Polk County Record, Body of Missing Man Found Near Distillary, The Polk County Record (Bartow, Fla.), 8 April 1920, page 1 (1920)
  3. The Polk County Record, Confesses to Helping Burn West's Remains, The Polk County Record (Bartow, Fla.), 15 April 1920, page 1 (1920)
  4. La Gaceta, La Gaceta (Tampa, Fla.), 2 November 1929, page 1: federal court report on Peter Brown conviction (1929)
  5. Federal Writers' Project, Work Projects Administration, Florida: A Guide to the Southernmost State, Federal Writers' Project, 1939, page 499 (1939)
  6. Leoma Bradshaw Maxwell, The First Hundred Years of Avon Park, Florida, Leoma Bradshaw Maxwell, 1976 (references/the-first-hundred-years-of-avon-park_leoma-bradshaw-maxwell_1976.md) (1976)

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