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🏘️ Croton Local History
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Cortlandt Bridge, 1911 Motoring Across the Croton, 1912 Share this: Print (Opens in new window) Print Email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email Share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook Share on X (Opens in new window) X Share on
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Pinterest (Opens in new window) Pinterest Share on Tumblr (Opens in new window) Tumblr Share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn Like Loading... Related Tagged Van Cortlandt Bridge Published October 14, 2017 October 15, 2017
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LIQUOR LADEN PLANE FROM CANADA FALLS AS IT NEARS CITY Drops 250 Quarts of Scotch Near Croton, Where Water for Highballs Comes From FLIER ESCAPES IN AN AUTO Car Apparently in Waiting Whisks Limping Aviator From Scene “Dusk was deepening into darkness”
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on the night of May 15, 1922, as a Curtis biplane circled slowly over a farm “about a mile and a quarter above Croton . . . a quarter of a mile from Tumble Inn, one of the much patronized roadhouses of the county.” 1 The farm’s owner, former
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Westchester County deputy sheriff George McCall, watched as the pilot “suddenly pointed the craft’s nose earthward and slipped toward the farmhouse.” Postcard for the Tumble Inn, once located near the hill where the rum plane crashed. As the New York
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Times reported the next day, “something about the landscape did not please [the pilot]. No one could figure out afterward whether it was the lay of the land itself, or whether his clandestine errand made the proximity of the house a paramount
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objection. At any rate, the pilot suddenly quickened his engine and climbed heavenward again. He flattened his course at about 1,000 feet and circled over the farm. Along the road a number of persons . . . were craning and watching his maneuvers.”
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Suddenly the pilot “evidently made a sharp decision to come down. It was thought afterward that he might have spied an automobile that was drawn at one side of the road not far from the farm.” “By then it was black night, and the task that faced the
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pilot . . . was severe. He made no attempts to get back to the level fields near the house. Instead, he came thumping down on a side hill that he may not have even discerned in the darkness. The nose of the plane dug into the earth, the wings
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crumpled and the ruptured tank sent a geyser of gasoline spraying over the whole craft,” which miraculously did not catch fire. This photo of the rum plane ran in newspapers across the country. Gasoline wasn’t the only thing that sprayed out of the
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plane. When McCall raced to the wreck he “caught the odor of whiskey above the smell of hot gasoline and oil.” 2 McCall feared the pilot was dead, but “instead of the body he found a wrathful and limping man, making good time toward an automobile
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that waited . . . door yawning hospitably.” “The pilot paused only long enough to say that he was not badly hurt and to mumble something about going to the village to get some one to care for the plane. Then he entered the car and was whizzed away.”
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McCall called the police and “Captain Warner, Lieutenant Roberts and three troopers piled into an automobile and burned up the miles from White Plains.” When they got to Croton “they found a little group of country folk grouped about the battered
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remains of a once gallant craft, some of them looking quite cheerful over that which the air had provided, others shaking their heads in grief over . . . what had once been perfectly able-bodied whisky bottles.” 3 George McCall (left) and the state
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troopers from White Plains examine the contraband found in the wrecked plane. Speaking “out of professional knowledge, gained in enforcing the prohibition laws in the wilds of Westchester,” Captain Warner said the whiskey was of “excellent quality.”
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The plane had two cockpits. The forward one had been used by the pilot and the other was crammed with burlap sacks of liquor bottles—some broken, many intact. In all there had been some 250 quarts of Scotch and Irish whiskey. All the bottles bore the
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tax stamp of the Quebec liquor commission. According to the Times, the bootleg market price for Scotch and Irish whiskey in New York was then about $15 a bottle, so the cargo would have fetched about $3,750. In Canada the cost per bottle was $3, so
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even if the rum runners paid the pilot $1,000 for his work they would have made a profit of $2,000 for a single trip. Aerial Rum Runners A search of the airplane the next day revealed a “worn chart, which obviously has traveled many hundreds of miles
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pressed between the knees of a pilot” giving officials “tangible evidence of a prosperous rum running business by air. They also saw why Westchester county, with its numerous roadhouses and thirsty, well to do people, has so many aerial visitors.
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Quite a few airplanes have been flying over Westchester lately, some running low and out of gliding distance of the river. It was conjectured that many of these may have been laden with bottles like the mystery plane which fell at Croton.” 4 George
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McCall shows the map he found hidden in the plane. The map was found by George McCall, who connected the arrival of the plane with the appearance two weeks earlier of a mysterious car which halted on the Albany Post Road, near where the pilot had
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tried to land. The car stayed until 4 o’clock in the morning and a few hours later McCall found his watchdog dead. A careful examination of the map revealed that the pilot had flown from Montreal to Glens Falls, NY, where he stopped to refuel. From
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Glens Falls a black line followed the Hudson River to Croton, where the line forked. One branch ran to Briarcliff, across Westchester County to Stamford, CT, then south to the Long Island Sound. The other branch ran south from Croton to Manhattan.
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The use of airplanes to transport illegal liquor to New York was shocking in 1922 and the Croton “rum plane” crash was covered widely in the press. An enterprising reporter in Buffalo—a center for smuggling from Canada—decided to ask the city’s
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“favorite law violators” what they thought. “Very Few Aerial Rum Runners Here,” read the headline, “Only Prices Aviate, Say Bootleggers, Who Surely Know.” Rum runners with the police officers who captured them. “‘In the first place,’ declared one
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bootlegger, ‘we don’t need airplanes in Buffalo. We need boats. In the second place the cost of operating and maintaining an airplane would make the price of whiskey prohibitive. A pilot’s salary is considerably more than a chauffeur’s. Airplanes are
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not so common that they can come and go, landing where they find it convenient. Fields must be provided, and there is slight chance that they would utilize a regular landing to bring in whiskey. I believe that the plane . . . was probably the private
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property of some wealthy man who wanted the booze regardless of cost.’” 5 A schooner used by rum runners. Supporting the bootlegger’s theory was the fact that “the whiskies were of various brands,” which led authorities “to think some chap with
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sporting blood decided to take a plane to Canada and fill an order for half a dozen friends and bring back just the particular Scotch or Irish each one liked. Some of the sheriffs who have had to do with seizures by truck stated that in these
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seizures the goods in nearly every case were of one brand only.” 6 Powder Puff Pilot In addition to the route map the police found “a vanity box, powder puff and several articles of feminine attire,” leading to speculation that the pilot had a