By Maggie Magoffin
From “Life in the Early Days” By James K. Ramstetter (1910-1996). Permission of use granted by Mary Ramstetter.
Life During Prohibition
When Prohibition was ratified in January, 1919, it did not seem to have any immediate effect on the Golden Gate Canyon community. The county still wanted liquor even though it was outlawed. It didn’t take long for people to figure out how to build stills. The mountain country was ideal for stills because it was easy to hide their location. Prohibition was enforced by local authorities as well as by Federal agents. However, secret payoffs caused some officials to overlook the location of stills.
About every six months the officials would conduct thorough searches. The Golden Gate Canyon area contained several hundred square miles. Much of this area was government-owned land belonging to the U.S. Forest Service. Operators of stills preferred government-owned land because of the limited access to such areas. There were also a number of stills on private land.
No one escaped the searches. One of the searches was quite memorable to me. On a June morning I was up about 5 a.m. building a fire in the kitchen stove to take the chill off the house and to ready it for my mother to prepare breakfast. Somebody knocked on the kitchen door; I opened it and there stood five or six well-dressed men who immediately flashed their badges. They stated that they were prohibition agents and wanted to search the house. I told them that everyone but me was still sleeping. They said they would allow five minutes’ time for everyone to wake up and get dressed before they searched the house.
After the folks were up and dressed, the agents came into the house and went through all the rooms, closets and cupboards. Suddenly, they were doing quite a bit of talking and seemed to be excited. They had found a quart bottle of Dago Red Wine in one of the closets. It had been given to our father about two years before by some of his Italian friends who lived east of Golden. Our mother was furious. Our father had hidden it in the closet from our mother as she did not like any kind of liquor around. He had forgotten about it.
After the prohibition agents had completed their search of the house, barns and outbuildings, they told our father that they would have to take the bottle to Denver to be tested. They said they would be back the following Thursday and told him he must be ready to go to jail at that time. Our mother was still furious about the matter and told our father that it served him right.
Thursday finally arrived. Our father explained that we kids would have to do the chores while he was gone. He had cleaned himself up, had on his best suit and packed a small bag with his razor and other things that he might need. He received no sympathy from our mother. Finally, two cars drove into our yard carrying the prohibition agents. Our father went out to meet them; he was good natured, easy going and greeted them with a handshake and broad grin.
One of the agents shook hands with him and returned the bottle of Red Dago Wine. The agent told him that it did not test out as containing any alcohol, and they were unable to identify the contents of the bottle—he would not have to go to jail. Our father was thunderstruck, and our mother seemed to forgive him.
Years later, after we had grown up, we told the folks what had really happened. When we were kids, the folks would go to town to get groceries and other supplies. Just before they left, they gave us a list of chores to be done while they were gone for the day. We always looked forward to the times when we were left in charge. My twin brother and I were about eleven years old, our sister a year and a half younger and our younger brother was about five. While they were gone, we always baked cookies and made candy besides doing our assigned chores. One time our sister was searching through one of the closets and discovered a bottle of Red Dago Wine. Even though we did not like the taste, we each had to sample it. To hide the missing liquor, we filled the bottle back up with water. This tapping of the bottle occurred every time the folks went to town. The bottle ended up containing only water. While we were sure the folks knew what had happened, they never mentioned it.
Several years later our father got braver and decided to make some choke cherry wine. We had finally got water piped from a spring a quarter of a mile from the house. We had installed a cabinet sink in the kitchen and were building a drain to handle the waste water. We made a small ditch to carry the water across the road until we could get a culvert.
The choke cherry wine was being made in a three-gallon crock which was placed in the sink cabinet. One day a car stopped right where the drain ended, and several well-dressed men got out of the car. Our father was busy chopping wood and walked over to greet them. Some of us were in the kitchen with our mother and were looking out the window wondering who these people were. Our younger brother came in from outside and said he believed they were prohibition agents. This piece of news got our mother excited, and she immediately thought about the crock of choke cherries in the sink cabinet. Her only thought was to get rid of the contents of the crock. She emptied the contents of the crock into the sink figuring it would be the best way to get rid of the wine. The wine drained out of the sink but came out of the drain right by the car where the men were standing. It was obvious what the stuff was. Fortunately, the men were from a church group looking for a place to have a church picnic. They decided to look someplace else.
Actually, as kids, we enjoyed the visits by the prohibition agents. They usually brought several bags of candy along with some soda pop which they distributed among the kids. They got us away from the folks and gave the goodies to us, and then proceeded to grill us. They asked where our daddy kept his still. Then one of the agents proceeded to describe it, and asked again if our daddy had any such thing around. However, they did not realize that a real owner of a still would never allow someone with seven kids to have one, as it would be impossible to keep the matter secret.
One day when the prohibition agents were making one of their searches, the kid from the ranch over the hill happened to be visiting us. He was the same age as my twin brother and I. He got a bag of candy and a bottle of pop along with the rest of us. He volunteered some information that the agents were really interested in. He mentioned that whenever anyone did any butchering of cattle, these people that were believed to be still operators would ask for the lower part of the forelegs of the butchered animal. They would then fasten the forelegs to stilts and use them when visiting the stills. The agents were real excited about this information—for several days they followed every cow trail in the country, but with no results.
From Maggie: If you have any interesting stories about family or acquaintances who have lived or still live in Gilpin County or the surrounding areas, please contact me. You can reach me at 303-881-3321. Email me at Maggie@Maggiempublications.com, or mail me at P.O. Box 746495, Arvada, Colorado 80006-6495.
Be sure to check out my website for past columns at www.MaggieMPublications.com.
The first two books in my Misadventures of the Cholua Brother’s Series are available on my website, on Amazon.com, Lulu.com and BarnesandNoble.com for $12.99 ea. + shipping. They can also be bought through the Gilpin Historical Museum and Mountain Menagerie in Central City. Watch for the release of the third and final book in the series Bonanza Beans available in late February or early March.
Cholua Brothers Mining Company specialty coffees can also be purchased at Mountain Menagerie in Central City or from their website at www.choluabros.com.