Moonshine Wars in Crescenta Valley

As we all know, Prohibition made the consumption and production of alcohol illegal from 1919 to 1933. And as we also know it was a wild time that featured clandestine bars, called speakeasies, and moonshiners operating illegal stills. The Crescenta Valley was ripe for these activities. We were close enough to Los Angeles and Hollywood to make easy access for customers buying illegal alcohol but remote enough to provide cover for the stills and speakeasies to operate. Old newspapers detail several clashes between purveyors of moonshine and the law.

The first incident is one I’ve written about before, a racially charged shooting at a speakeasy in today’s Whiting Woods neighborhood at the very beginning of Prohibition. A black man who worked for Perry Whiting was forced by the local district attorney to lead authorities to local moonshiners. When the moonshiners came after him for revenge he shot one of them in self-defense. He turned himself in but was very nearly lynched by local residents, who sided with the moonshiners.

In 1923 Prohibition agents swooped in on a huge moonshine operation located at “the end of Honolulu Avenue,” presumably around La Tuna Canyon. The moonshiners were warned ahead of time and fled leaving behind a 200-gallon still, a 500-gallon still, 500 gallons of alcohol and 10,000 gallons of mash. Also abandoned at the site was a truck, a fancy touring car, a phonograph and an expensive fur coat. It was the largest bust in Southern California up to that time.

Agents raided another big alcohol operation in Riverside in 1925. In that bust the moonshiners were in the process of packing up their operation for a move to Montrose. The still and some bottles had been loaded onto a truck bound for the Crescenta Valley but it was chased down by sheriff deputies. Another of the moonshiners led the sheriffs on a wild car chase before crashing.

Also that year – 1925 – the owner of the Montrose Riding Academy was arrested at his Montrose home. He and a partner, a resident of Sunland, were raided by sheriffs at a Montrose home where a 40-gallon still and a good quantity of alcohol were seized.

The next year, 1926, Prohibition officers conducted simultaneous raids in Glendale, Sunland and Montrose. In Glendale, a man resisted officers when they busted into his house on Orange Grove Avenue near Chevy Chase. Several women also were arrested for fighting officers. A Sunland bust netted a 300-gallon still and a large quantity of alcohol. Four men were arrested in that raid. Back in Montrose, officers raided a restaurant called the Outside Inn. The proprietress was arrested for selling contraband whiskey and “maintaining a common nuisance.”

Things were fairly quiet until 1931 when it appears the Mafia had entered into the illegal alcohol trade. The head of the Los Angeles mafia, Joe “Ironman” Ardizzone, lived in Sunland (where Mt. Gleason Middle School is today) and based some of his operations from there. In March of that year a truck was driving at night through Sunland when a fancy car pulled up next to it and two sawed-off shotguns were leveled at the driver. When the driver pulled over, two men “believed to be Italians” searched the truck. They let the driver go after remarking that “this isn’t the truck we are looking for.” It’s worth noting that just a few months later, Joe Ardizzone was “taken for a ride,” never to be seen again. When the Ardizzone property was bulldozed to build the school several tunnels were revealed, probably hiding places for illegal alcohol.

And lastly in 1933, just scant months before Prohibition was to end, a huge speakeasy called the Verdugo Lodge in La Crescenta was raided in the early morning hours. After shouting “It’s a raid,” 500 drunk patrons poured out of doors and windows to escape the police. Besides the bar downstairs, a big gambling operation was going on upstairs. Officers remarked that “it was the swankiest place they had ever raided.”

As Prohibition ended, several establishments in the valley were free to sell alcohol legally – no matter that they had previously been doing so for several years.