How Cazadero’s Moonshine Pond got its name

Moonshine Pond is located near Cazadero. For longtime Cazadero resident Caerleon Safford, the name conjures up a moonlit evening and someone playing romantic songs on the ukulele. But no one knows for sure. Moonshine, of course, is also illicit liquor. Smuggling booze in old England to avoid taxes was excused as a “matter of moonshine,” a mere nothing. While honest folk labored in daylight, outlaws worked at night under the shine of the moon.

During Prohibition, Sonoma County’s rugged hills and coastline were an ideal place to operate outside the law. Canadian whiskey was landed by ship in hidden coves, where it was transferred to trucks for delivery to San Francisco and elsewhere. But moonshine was also made right here.

In those days, many people living in the hills and mountains of Sonoma County were of Scotch-Irish descent. When they arrived on the East Coast in the 18th century, the best land was already taken. So they settled the southern Appalachians, scratching out a marginal living and continuing a tradition of making whiskey. In the mid-19th century, their descendants migrated by wagon train to the West Coast. Those who ended up in Sonoma County faced a familiar situation; the best land was already claimed, so they headed to the hills. When Prohibition was enacted in 1919, they were in an advantageous position - living in remote places and able to brew stuff that was in high demand.

Bill Basileu, who grew up in El Verano in the 1920s, remembered how bootleggers would hide their operations in some “godforsaken ditch.” Occasionally a still would blow up, and he’d spot “a big blast of smoke” rising from the hills. Deer hunting near Trinity Road, Bill was greeted at gunpoint by “an eccentric old guy” who looked like “he hadn’t shaved in 10 years.” He was protecting his still.

Moonshine Pond also suggests an English story about some smugglers who hid their kegs in a pond. One night, as they were using rakes to recover their stash, two lawmen discovered them and inquired what they were doing. Feigning stupidity, one smuggler pointed at the moon’s reflection and asked, “Don’t you see that cheese there?” Another splashed the water with his rake and said, “Lord! There be a thousand little cheeses now! Rake away! Rake away!” Taking the men for real bumpkins, the amused lawmen continued on their way, none the wiser.

Whether “Moonshine Pond” refers to a romantic evening, the former site of a still, or something else entirely may never be known. The name’s origin remains as well hidden as a still in the hills.