At the onset of Prohibition in 1920, the demand for illegally distilled liquor skyrocketed, and Cocke County was primed to meet it. Not only did the county have moonshiners with generations of experience, but the remote Appalachian hollows and thick forest provided perfect hiding places for illegal stills. And as young men left the farms of rural Tennessee to seek employment in the textile mills of Knoxville and the large manufacturing hubs of the Midwest in the early 20th century, networks for moving the liquor from the mountain hollows to the large urban areas were already in place.