NASCAR, Untaxed Liquor, and the Whiskey Rebellion

Still, they maintained their belief that making whiskey was a man’s right, and those meddlesome outsiders had no right to tax a good man’s hard work. 

At the end of World War II, a lot of young men, many of them trained by the military to work on things mechanical: Jeeps, trucks, tanks and aircraft, came home looking for jobs.

For those from the southern Allegheny Mountain area there was again a reason to make moonshine: a quick way to put money in the pockets of mountain men who were following the traditions and skills of liquor making passed down by their fathers before them.

While the war veterans out West put their mechanical skills to return to racing on the salt flats (the dry lake beds they used before the war were now air bases) and inventing drag racing, the young veterans of the South used their skills to improve the speed of the cars used to transport the untaxed liquor to the customers in the towns.

The taxation efforts on liquor by the Federal Government had not stopped after The Whiskey Rebellion, and by 1863, the Congress had authorized the Federal Governments' tax collecting arm, then known as the Office of Internal Revenue to hire “three detectives to aid in the prevention, detection, and punishment of tax evaders."

These first agents were the predecessors of the Revenue Service “Revenuers” who found that they had to catch these Southern “tax evaders” first! The moonshine haulers proved to be a fast bunch, running down the back roads of the South.

Stock car racing began in the South when some moonshine haulers decided to see who had the better car. In some farmer's field they decided to amuse themselves and decide who the best was. Then some folks heard about the fun, decided to see what was going on, and gathered to watch.

When the drivers found that someone had passed a hat among the spectators, and there was money to be won, this racing thing got a little more serious. By 1948, Big Bill France decided that the only way this new Wild West of motorsport would survive was if there was some sort of organization.

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