Author McCann shares tales of Prohibition in Eastern Iowa at Marble Rock Historical Society event

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

Author Linda Betsinger McCann said she’s always surprised when someone comes up to her after one of her talks about the Prohibition time in Iowa and says they didn’t realize it had been in effect in this state.

The constitutional amendment outlawing the production, transportation, importation and sale of alcoholic beverages had been in effect nationwide, although its impact and how rigidly it was enforced varied from place to place, she said.

McCann was the guest speaker at a Marble Rock Historical Society event Tuesday evening held in the former Lutheran Church that the society acquired last fall. The talk was followed by a freewill donation pasta bar supper to benefit the Historical Society.

McCann talked about the research she did for her book, “Prohibition in Eastern Iowa,” including speaking with people who had been the children of Iowa moonshiners and bootleggers, and she shared some of their memories, as well as other interesting facts such as investigating rumors of gangster Al Capone’s involvement in the state.

She said Iowa farmers started out turning their abundant corn into alcoholic spirits often as a way to survive financially with low crop prices and other economic problems of that period. A lot of people treated the practice, although illegal, without much concern. But that started to change when organized crime became involved, including gangsters from Chicago.

McCann, from Shell Rock, is best known for her “Lost Towns of Iowa” book series, in which she provides information about communities that no longer exist in various Iowa counties and regions.

But her more than a dozen published historical books have also been written about prisoners of World War II in Iowa, the Civilian Conservation Corps in different regions of the state, and Iowa’s own “Rosie the Riveters” who took jobs formerly held by men during World War II.

McCann has talked about what’s in her Prohibition book many times to various groups.

The national law lasted 13 years, from 1920 when the 18th Amendment went into effect, until 1933, when the 21st Amendment repealed the ban.

While some of the most famous Prohibition stories did not happen in Iowa, the law had all of the same impact here, including secret hiding spots for exchanging moonshine for money, gun fights and even murders.

People who wanted liquor usually found a way to get it, and to keep it hidden once they had it, she said, talking about some of the unusual hiding places.

McCann told the story of how some gravestones had bronze plaques that could be removed to reveal secret spaces where liquor and cash could be exchanged.

She said she was in Carroll and was told that some of those headstones still existed today and were being used to sell illegal drugs. People seem to react more strongly to them being used for illicit drug dealing than they did for alcohol sales, she said, shrugging and saying, “Both of them were illegal.”

Some law officers turned their eyes away from the bootlegging, explaining that the people involved were their friends and neighbors, and were only doing it to survive hard times, she said.

Things stayed pretty innocent until the mobs got involved, McCann said. There were mainly three mobs and they had a presence all over the state.

“There definitely was one in Des Moines, and Des Moines was called Little Chicago,” she said.

Lots of rumors involved legendary gangster Al Capone in Iowa.

A couple of people in different parts of the state had told her about a private railroad car that Capone allegedly had, and that would be parked in various communities from time to time.

A woman in southeast Iowa told her, “When I was a kid, about every two weeks, our mothers would tell us, don’t go to the station, don’t play there, don’t throw balls. Al Capone’s there. Stay away. We always checked it out and there was always a railroad car there,” McCann said the woman told her.

McCann said she checked with Capone experts, who said they couldn’t find evidence of a private train car.

“Who knows how much Capone was here,” McCann said.

A lot of information can be gleaned from newspaper articles from that time, she said, reading samples from the Rockford Register published between 1923 and 1930 that reported arrests, convictions and sentences for bootlegging and “liquor nuisance” violations.

One story reported about a raid that made arrests and located stills in a basement. The three stills had a total production capacity of 2,275 gallons – daily, she said.

A story from 1929 reported that a local man had figured out how to avoid detection – “he put a pint jar bottle of liquor into a pumpkin and sold the pumpkin,” she read.

McCann took questions from the audience of a couple of dozen people and offered to sign copies of her many books before folks moved to the church basement for the pasta bar supper.