Universal York

Part of the USA Today Network

York County Moonshine

Some of my recent posts have covered motion pictures and other forms of entertainment around York County in 1938. For a few hours local people could be distracted from the toll taken by the depression, which had dragged on for nine long years.
Click below for the previous posts.
Movies.
And more movies.
Music and dancing.
One Warrington Township farmer evidently found another way to forget the dark days. The September 15, 1938 York Gazette reports:

FIND MOONSHINE UNDER PIG PEN
State Liquor Control Board Agents Raid Farm in Warrington Twp.
THIRD ARREST OF OWNER

Officials said the farmer’s pigs “pigs slept on a bed of moonshine, so to speak.”
“State enforcement officers and Deputy Sheriff C. S. Cooper visited Sidler’s farm in Warrington Township, near Rossville, late yesterday afternoon, and after an extensive search of the premises said they found five gallons of moonshine liquor cached under the flooring of the pig pen.”
“Certain that the moonshine liquor was not placed there for the pigs to imbibe,” the farmer was arrested on a charge of illegal possession of untaxed liquor.
The article doesn’t make it clear if Sidler was suspected of producing the moonshine or of just possessing it. What they were really upset about was that, whoever made it, taxes weren’t being paid. They were probably not too happy with having to hang around the pig pen either.
You don’t hear much about moonshine anymore, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there were still some stills tucked away in the corners of York County.