Although the United States government banned the sale, production and transportation of alcohol in 1920, it made no difference to the residents of Frostburg. Liquor and beer flowed so freely in the Mountain City that drunks staggered through the streets with little fear of consequences.
Once the U.S. Congress ratified nationwide Prohibition in January 1919, the Volstead Act, passed later that year, provided the means to enforce liquor and beer sales and manufacture. Prohibition went into effect on midnight January 17, 1920, and the first arrest under the Volstead Act was made less than an hour later (in Chicago).
The first arrest in Frostburg of someone violating the Volstead Act didn’t happen until October 21, 1922, nearly three years after Prohibition started. By then, the city had a statewide reputation for out-of-control drunkenness and not enforcement of Prohibition.
A 1921 front-page article in the Cumberland Evening Times proclaimed: “Vice Crusade on Town Evils in Frostburg. County Bootleggers and Prostitutes Have Made It Headquarters in Recent Weeks.”
“Certain near-beer saloons sell moonshine openly over the bar, while ‘etherized’ beer that carries a kick and sickening after-effect, is dispensed by the truckload by the county ‘rum ring,’ assisted by Pittsburg bootleggers,” the newspaper reported.
Many of the bars also had “ladies parlors” and wine-rooms where the prostitutes seem to have met up with their johns. The Cumberland Evening Times reported that during the Declaration Day celebration, it was estimated 100 prostitutes came to Frostburg from Keyser, Cumberland, and the towns along the creek. They attended a dance in the backroom of a saloon in Frostburg where they plied their trade.
The newspaper also reported that “cocaine artists” from Cumberland came to the city to hold “snow parties.”
Unpopular law
Though Prohibition was not popular nationwide, many towns and cities in the state were lax about enforcement of the Volstead Act.
A Cumberland Evening Times editorial proclaimed in 1920, “On the bootlegging proposition the police commissioner is probably right in his conclusion that the United States army would not be able to stop drunkenness entirely. This probably would be true so long us preventing drunkenness depends upon the enforcement of so extreme and unreasonable a measure as the Volstead act which, in its entirety is not respected by one reasonable person in ten.”
Maryland was the only state not to pass an enforcement act, which meant that Prohibition enforcement fell mainly to federal agents.
However, no matter how unpopular Prohibition was, law enforcement officials did their jobs. According to Herman Miller in Cumberland, Maryland through the eyes of Herman J. Miller, police and federal agents made so many arrests for bootlegging and illegal liquor sales during Prohibition that the Allegany County Jail couldn’t hold everyone at times and the excess prisoners had to be kept in the Garrett County Jail in Oakland.
Frostburg gone wild
It appears that little enforcement happened in Frostburg, particularly since it took nearly three years to make a moonshining arrest.
Constable John Lewis arrested Joseph Cavey of Ormand Street for selling moonshine to two brothers named Huston on October 21, 1922. Cavey was released on a $1,000 bond the next day and promptly became the city’s second arrest for a Volstead Act violation when he apprehended for selling a pint of moonshine to Elmer Lancaster.
Lancaster had come to Frostburg from Eckhart and “indulged to (sic) freely, resulting in the usual drunken stupor,” according to the Cumberland Evening Times.
On his way home, Lancaster was thrown from his wagon along Midlothian Road. He apparently then wandered away from the wagon along the road until he collapsed. A passerby found him bleeding from a head wound.
The wound wasn’t serious, but when Officer Jabez Mealing arrived, he could smell the liquor on Lancaster. Mealing bandaged Lancaster’s wound and took the man to jail. When Lancaster woke up, he told the police that Cavey had sold him the moonshine.
While the National Road was a great benefit to Frostburg in bringing people to the city, it also made it possible for the troublemakers to get to the city easier. Besides loud and drunken people on the streets at all hours of the night, men were often drugged and robbed.
“It is asserted in Frostburg that drunken, sodden men lay around these resorts all day and night and the better element are incensed at conditions,” according to the Cumberland Evening Times.
The mayor and city councilmen started a clean-up campaign “to arrest all disorderly men and women”. They were enforcing new town ordinance on public conduct and not the Volstead Act, which they said they had no authority to enforce.
Although many Frostburg residents were upset with all the disruptions from drunk men and women, they were often making their own wine in their homes. The newspaper noted in 1922 that “many once-Prohibitionists Are Said to Have Been Stung by the Bug.” If affected both men and women with the newspaper noting that women “seem more anxious than the men to get the ‘proper taste.’”
It was estimated 60 percent of Frostburg families were making wine illegally. “In other words 850 families will have wine cellars or closets this year with approximately 6,000 gallons on hands (unless someone else gets a key to the cellar),” the Cumberland Evening Times reported.
Enforcement
Only a few days after Frostburg’s first arrest under the Volstead Act in 1922, citizens were “shocked” when federal agent George Hawkins led raids on multiple locations on October 24, 1922. Hawkins and five other police and agents arrested over three dozen men (including Cavey once again) and women in raids on the cellar of the Biddington home, Federal Hill, Hotel Gunter, and St. Cloud Hotel. The raids began at Federal Hill at 7 a.m.
“Throughout the day, Hawkins and his staff hauled the prisoners and loot in one by one,” the Cumberland Evening Times reported.
Agents seized four stills in the raid and dumped 400 gallons of liquor. According to the newspaper, the jugs, kegs, stills, gauges and other equipment seized in the raids filled one end of the town hall.
“At five o’clock last evening the lock-up resembled a convention hall of a bootlegger’s conference,” the newspaper reported.
The raid resulted from Secret Service agents visiting the city weeks before in an undercover capacity. They collected information about bootleggers and speakeasies in Frostburg, which they passed on to Hawkins.
This seemed to open the eyes of the Frostburg Mayor and Council, who worked hard to develop local conduct laws that city police could enforce so they wouldn’t have to rely on federal agents enforcing the Volstead Act. The local laws focused on public drunkenness. This left the cause of the drunkenness, the sale and manufacture of liquor, for Federal agents to enforce.
Although it might seem that Frostburg was the wildest town in Allegany County during Prohibition, it wasn’t the only place where a person could buy moonshine.
“Illicit liquor, manufactured in countless stills in homes, farmyard barns, and even auto repair shops, could be bought all over the county,” Stegmaier wrote.
The end of prohibition
Because of its unpopularity, Prohibition soon ended after the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932. However, Allegany County lagged behind the rest of the state in switching over to selling alcohol. A bill passed in the state legislature stipulated that county beer permits didn’t become effective until seven days after the sale of beer became legal, which happened on April 7, 1933.
“You could buy beer on the first day of repeal in Pennsylvania. A store just over the state line on the Bedford Road was selling beer on the first day. A steady stream of Cumberlanders took advantage of the beer sale,” Miller wrote.
On April 14, beer sales finally became legal in the county and the speakeasies came out in the open to handle the steady business that now came their way.
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