Franklin County has long been known as the moonshine capital of the world. Neighboring Patrick and Floyd counties are now collaborating with Franklin County to celebrate Virginia’s moonshine heritage with the creation of the Mountain Spirit Trail.
Visitors will be able to learn about the history of corn whiskey and its impact on the region, visit sites of destroyed stills and enjoy tastings of legally produced moonshine from local distilleries along Virginia’s newest tourism trail.
The Mountain Spirit Trail brand was revealed at a public event last week. The trail is still under development, but visitors can expect to see complete trail information this fall.
“Moonshine heritage is more than just history; it’s a living testament to our Appalachian roots and the craftsmanship that defines us. Inspired by this rich legacy, the [Mountain Spirit Trail] beckons adventurers to immerse themselves in our storied tradition,” Kathleen Legg, Floyd County’s tourism director, said in a press release.
“Our moonshine heritage has deep roots tracing back to the region’s early settlers, who relied on the production of illicit distilled spirits as a means of survival and income,” Patrick County tourism director James Houchins said during an April 30 event celebrating the trail.
“We’re so excited to be able to share it with the rest of the world and we hope … that you will work with us to develop the trail, to develop the stops, to tell those stories [and] to tell that history,” said Kevin Tosh, Franklin County’s director of tourism and marketing.
The tourism trail will promote 10 to 12 sites in each of the three counties, he said. Tosh and his Patrick and Floyd county counterparts began working on the trail two years ago, although the idea was first proposed by their predecessors prior to COVID.
The unveiling was held at the Blue Ridge Institute and Museum at Ferrum College, which will be a destination along the Mountain Spirit Trail, according to Bethany Worley, its executive director.
“We have the largest moonshine collection in the world, including stills … photographs and documents,” she said, adding that the climate-controlled archive includes collections from multiple historians.
Following the announcement, Worley led a group tour of the archives. Old distilling equipment fills a large back room; many of the items were donated to the museum, she said.
Henry Law of Law’s Choice Distillery, Moonshine Explosion museum owner Greg Graham and Living Proof Beer Company head brewer Rob Amos stood in the corner discussing the stills and other moonshining artifacts.
Law noted the workmanship of a large copper worm, a coiled copper tube that would have been used in a still to condense steam back into liquid moonshine, according to BRIM.
Law could tell that the worm had been handcrafted in the tradition of old-time coppersmiths.
“You can’t get them [like that] anymore,” he said.
The worm Law was referring to, standing about knee-high and held up by a wooden frame, was fashioned by the late Hansel Turner of Patrick County, said Caleb Bailey, BRIM’s office manager and festival organizer.
The worm shows seams in the tubing. Traditional coppersmiths would take sheets of copper, roll them into tubing and solder the edges together. They would then wind the tube into a hefty coil.
“We don’t have to do all the soldering that they had to do. Every time you do a little bit of soldering you take more chances of a leak,” Law said.
Modern-day distillers can buy copper tubing to wind into worms. There’s little chance of having a leak with the new method, Law said.
Law’s family continues to pass down the moonshining tradition, in a more legal fashion. His distillery is a couple of miles south of Rocky Mount; he said he prides himself on still doing everything in the traditional way.
“Everything we have, we built,” Law said, telling of a time that a federal Alcohol, Tax and Trade Bureau official asked him for serial numbers for the equipment. He said he didn’t have any serial numbers because they had built everything themselves.
“He couldn’t wrap his brain around it,” Law said.
“It’s a dying art. We don’t push stuff like this, it will all be lost. And we don’t want it to be lost,” Law said to the crowd during the event, mentioning that his son Austin would eventually take over Law’s Choice Distillery.
“I never dreamed I’d be able to hand it down to my son. My grandfather, my father, me and now my son — it gives me chills to even talk about it,” he said.
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The Mountain Spirit Trail’s roots are in the state’s “Virginia is for Moonshine Lovers” campaign, according to Houchins.
On Jan. 16, 2019, the spinoff of the state’s larger “Virginia is for Lovers” brand was unveiled during a ceremony that also commemorated the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 18th Amendment, which ushered in Prohibition, according to The Smith Mountain Eagle.
At the 2019 ceremony, then-Franklin County Tourism Director David Rotenizer said, “We need to own Prohibition from a tourism perspective and from a community pride perspective.”
“You might say that David passed off the baton,” Houchins said as he explained the history of the project to the crowd gathered last week.
Rotenizer pitched the idea of a moonshine trail shortly after Houchins took over the Patrick County tourism department. Houchins loved the idea, and decided to see how much information he could gather about moonshining in his county.
“The ball started rolling,” he said. Houchins brought Tosh on board, and then Floyd County Tourism Director Floyd Legg.
Houchins and Patrick County tourism associate Noah Mabe began sifting through records at the Patrick County Historical Society. They sought out people like former Patrick County Sheriff’s Office Investigator Danny Martin, who now works as an interpretive ranger at Fairy Stone State Park.
Martin, 77, worked narcotics his first three years in the sheriff’s office, he said, and was involved in the investigations or raids of eight Patrick County moonshine stills. Most often, informants would report moonshine operations to Martin, or he would find them when he was walking through the woods, he said.
“I love to walk a little, to hike. I’ve been all over these mountains, all these woods. I’ve found the ruins of a number of stills. Probably a dozen or so,” Martin said.
“I was told at a very early age, if I ever heard anything about moonshine, keep my mouth shut,” he said, explaining that he grew up in the region and understood all about the history of the trade.
Even today, he imagines that people are still making illicit liquor somewhere out there, maybe to keep up the tradition or the culture, or just because of greed.
Martin and his stories helped the team identify a number of Patrick County trail locations, Houchins said.
One of those will be Fairy Stone State Park, where Martin leads a Moonshine Hollow Hike that winds past two historical still locations, only accessible by trailblazing through the woods, he said.
The Patrick County section will also take in I.C. DeHart Park, No Business Mountain at the Reynolds Homestead, and the Patrick County Historical Museum, according to Mabe.
Over in Floyd County, trail stops will include the Floyd County Historical Society, 5 Mile Mountain Distillery, Old Church Gallery, LUSH Lounge and the historical marker commemorating the birthplace of bootlegger-turned-NASCAR-driver Curtis Turner, among other places, according to Legg.
Franklin County offers three distilleries with tasting rooms: Franklin County Distilleries, Twin Creeks Distillery and Roosters Rise N Shine Distillery; all three will be featured on the trail, Tosh said. While Law’s Choice Distillery does not have a tasting room, restaurants and bars serving its products will be listed as stops on the trail. Other stops in that county will include BRIM, the Franklin County Historical Society and the Moonshine Explosion museum, which opened May 1 in the basement of Rocky Mount’s Olde Towne Social House.
In terms of moonshine history, the building has housed both Turner Motor Company and Helms Farmer Exchange, the latter of which was the focus of a state and federal moonshine investigation and trial beginning in 1998.
As for Turner Motor Company, the car dealership and repair shop’s legendary fire is the reason the museum exists. On July 11, 1930, three Model Ts dropped through the building’s wooden first floor and into the basement during a massive fire.
The fire had started shortly after a car was pulled into a garage bay, full of fuel and full of moonshine, said museum co-owner Beth Graham.
”[The car] was running hot as it usually was, because it was running from the law,” she said. The mechanic left the car to cool down and he left the building, she said.
The mechanic, Reedy Dillon, closed the garage door on his way out of the building, according to information provided by Linda Stanley at the Franklin County Historical Society.
But the engine didn’t cool down. Instead, a leaking fuel pump sparked the fire, according to The Franklin News Post.
“[The car] exploded with the two cars beside it and fell through to the basement,” Beth Graham said, noting that the wooden floor burned through. Burn marks can still be seen on the building’s first floor interior walls.
Three cars have remained in the basement ever since. In 2008 and again in 2015, they were discovered during building renovations, when contractors opened up the basement’s brick walls. Now, they are on display for public viewing.
“That’s just great timing that it all happened that way,” said Greg Graham, regarding the museum’s opening coinciding with the announcement of the trail.
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“I’m really anxious to see the whole lineup of what [the trail] has to offer and how that can be utilized by businesses and community partners,” said Kalen Hunter, senior destination development manager at Virginia Tourism Corporation, the state’s tourism agency.
“Our vision … is to take this to a regional and then also to a state level, to have a Moonshine Heritage Trail that retells the history of moonshine,” Houchins said during the event at BRIM.
The Mountain Spirit Trail received $5,500 in the spring of 2023 from the Virginia Tourism Corporation’s Marketing Leverage Program. Patrick County partnered with Floyd County and Franklin County to supply $5,500 in matching funds.
“It’s beneficial to see communities coming together to promote their assets,” Hunter said.
Marketing and managing the trail will be a collective effort between the three counties and the West Piedmont Planning District Commission.
In 2022, tourism contributed $108.7 million in direct impact to Franklin, Patrick and Floyd counties, according to data from the Virginia Tourism Corporation. More than half of that, $67.9 million, was spent in Franklin County. That can probably be attributed to Franklin County’s location along Smith Mountain Lake, Tosh said, since the VTC data includes second-home spending.
In 2022, Franklin County brought in $2.7 million in taxes attributable to visitor spending, according to the VTC data. Patrick and Floyd counties followed with $1.2 million and $700,000, respectively.
According to Legg, she, Houchins and Tosh have drawn inspiration from the success of Kentucky’s Moonshine Trail.
“It’s the perfect time because if you look [back] 10 to 15 years ago, it was still sort of taboo to talk about, but now more people are realizing that this is about their heritage,” Houchins said.
“We’re not promoting, per se, the consumption of moonshine. Although we know if you study something long enough, you’re going to want to see what it is,” he said.