Dare County town was America’s ‘moonshine capital’

Buffalo City on the mainland in Dare County, N.C., became an economic powerhouse as a logging town, beginning in 1889.

Then, the community “reinvented itself” in the early 1900s as a bootlegging town. The transition was fairly smooth and seamless. It was an “economic development” success story. 

Fate has since wiped Buffalo City off the map. There’s nothing left of the town that once was home to 3,000 people.

First, it was all about the timber. Brothers Charles and Frank Goodyear of Buffalo, N.Y., purchased more than 100,000 acres of prime forestland on the Dare County mainland and set up their Buffalo City Mills lumber operation. 

“The laborers the company brought south with them, including a number of African-Americans and Russian immigrants, were tasked with building a town in the middle of nowhere from the ground up,” wrote Amelia Boldaji of the North Beach Sun in Kill Devil Hills.

The town was also known as Dareforest for a time.

 

It was a brutal existence. No electricity, no indoor plumbing, no air conditioning, no bug spray. The woods and swamps were teeming with “virulent insects,” snakes, alligators and bears, she said. 

Yet, each morning, workers left the three-room, company-owned cabins to drive mule carts through soft, boggy ground to harvest prized juniper, cypress, cedar and pine. 

Logs were floated down Milltail Creek, feeding into the Alligator River. The logs were loaded onto barges and transported across the Albemarle Sound and up the Pasquotank River to sawmills in Elizabeth City. 

By 1903, Buffalo City Mills had pretty much exhausted the premium timber the area had to offer, so the company ceased operations, Boldaji reported. 

A local Dare County entrepreneurial family – the Duvalls – stepped up to buy the land. They invested in railroad infrastructure to more efficiently harvest trees that grew deeper in the swamp. Some folks said more than 100 miles of train tracks were laid by hand.

The economics of Buffalo City took a sharp turn in 1908, coinciding with North Carolina’s prohibition referendum that banned the production and sale of alcoholic beverages. 

When one door closes, another door of opportunity opens. Hello bootleggers. Welcome to Buffalo City, “Moonshine Capital of America.” 

Buffalo City capitalized on its “isolated location, access to natural waterways and the dense canopy that concealed them from outsiders,” Boldaji said. “Buffalo City turned out to be the ideal spot for lucrative, large-scale bootleg operations.” 

She said the town’s residents embraced their new vocation with a passion. “It wasn’t your run-of-the-mill homemade whiskey either; this was the good stuff. Almost every family in Buffalo City operated a still or was otherwise involved in bootleg liquor.”

They perfected rye whiskey, deemed a better drink than corn whiskey. “Buffalo City Rye” earned a reputation as a sipping whisky – one of the most sought-after drinks in the speakeasies from Norfolk, Va., to Boston, Mass. 

North Carolina historian and author Jay Barnes said: “Moonshine whiskey – handcrafted Carolina swamp juice – brought Buffalo City back to life…as the moonshine capital of the United States.”

Prohibition was lifted in the 1930s, and Buffalo City had to give up its crown…and face the harsh reality that its best logging and bootlegging days had passed. 

Barnes said: “The few remaining residents abandoned their homes when the last mill closed in the early 1950s. With no human hands to hold them in check, the swamp’s thick brush and pervasive vines soon claimed the city’s empty streets and buildings. Today, all that remains is a road to nowhere.”