The Great Smoky Mountains Heritage Center in Townsend will be getting one awesome donation this week. Coming from Mike Williams, a resident of Venice, Florida, is his father Charlie William’s Whiskey Still. A special building has been built by the Heritage Center to house the Still and the information about its origin and operation. It has been reassembled as closely as possible to its original form for the exhibit, which opened this week.
Charlie Williams lived just outside of Townsend, rumor has it “it was just far enough off all beaten paths that they wouldn’t just stumble onto it by accident.” But there was a good reason to try - Charlie was known for making “some of the best hooch in the hills.”
Charlie learned the skill of making Whiskey when he was just a young boy but three things made his Whiskey stand out from all the others:
The Still was operated by Charlie for 20 years, and he closed it down as recently as the late 1980’s. The Still was capable of handling as much as 450 gallons of mash and could produce 88 to 95 gallons of whiskey per run, which was about every six days.
Mike Williams, 60, said he got his first taste of moonshine at age 4 and missed his senior class photo at Townsend High School in 1965 because he was helping his father pour concrete for the ceiling of the bunker-style structure that housed the still.
If you’re in the area of The Great Smoky Mountain Heritage Center, make sure to stop by and see this exhibit. It’s certainly treasure in its own right, and is a wonderful tribute to a generation we may never really know.
Read the rest of this lengthy and engaging article at KnoxNews.com’s website, and see more pictures of Charlie and his son Mike.
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