*Homestead on the Sun River, about 1910-1920, glass plate negative [2016.046.0016]*

As part of a project, Simms High School did their own student literary magazines. Students would do history reports, interviews, and write poems for the magazine. In 2000, Jomaque Cannon Jr. interviewed Fred and Nina Dear about a man named Arthur Savoy.

Arthur “Frenchy” Savoy was an infamous moonshine maker in Cascade County. He had several stills hidden from Simms around down to Cascade. His crowning crime was an elaborate and well concealed distilling plant in a shack two miles west of St. Peter’s Mission on Sullivan Creek.

From Stories In Place III: Our Sun River Heritage the Simms High School Student Literary Magazine, 2000:

“I don’t believe a word of it,” was Fred Dear’s response to the statement saying that Simms, Montana was devoid of liquor during Prohibition. Many stories have been told about Frenchy Savoy and his infamous stills. Others have described the varied illness caused by bad “bathtub gin.” Many of the stories told about the Sun River Valley center around Simms and Frenchy Savoy and how they changed the Valley.

The Prohibition Era was a time of rebellion in the United States. During the years before Prohibition became a set law, there were organizations that let a crusade against drinking in the America. Organizations like the Anti-Saloon League and the Women’s Christian Temperance Movement attempted, at first through legislation, to stop consumption of alcohol. Individuals like Carrie Nation brought the word of these organizations right into bars and saloons. She spoke strongly and was known for carrying a hatchet, which she used to destroy saloon merchandise as well as the bar itself. By the early 1900’s, the temperance organizations were working towards a national law to control the sale and use of liquor in the United States. In January of 1919, after much pressure from these organizations and a need to conserve grain due to World War I, the 18th Amendment was ratified. This law made it illegal to manufacture or sell liquor within the United States. Nine months later, the Volstead Act was passed. It was put into action by Congress to provide an enforcement for the new Amendment. However, the law was so widely disregarded that many officials were not able or willing to enforce it. The law was basically ignored and many people found ways around it.

Bootlegging, the illegal manufacture and sale of liquor, was rampant in the Prohibition Era. The bootlegging industry was an extremely lucrative business and was taken over in large part by organized crime. Although big cities had small stills, breweries, and wineries, a majority of the illegal alcohol came from rural communities, like the Sun River Valley. Smugglers, called rum-runners, went in and out of Great Falls and the surrounding areas throughout the Prohibition Era. Illegal saloons, called speakeasies, were abundant in the big cities and small towns.

On December 5, 1933, Prohibition ended. It was repealed by the 19th Amendment, which also made the Volstead Act null and void. The “dry times” had come to an end. The Noble experiment, as Prohibition is sometimes called, had been proven useless in a nation of people who had always found a way to get through the hard times.

The Sun River Valley was not necessarily hit hard by Prohibition. The Valley was known for its stagecoach stops and churches, not for its saloons and breweries. Even with that, bootleggers did make the Sun River Valley their home during Prohibition. The name Frenchy Savoy was mentioned in tales of Simms, Fort Shaw, and Sun River. Stories about mountain dugouts and back porch bathtub distilleries made the Prohibition Era came alive. People smuggled whiskey across the border from Canada, bringing it to the Birdtail area to hide. But few people affected the Valley like Frenchy Savoy.

Simms was a very religious town prior to and during the Prohibition Era. But in the midst of all the Mormons, Catholics, and Methodists was Frenchy Savoy. “Handsome, funny,” was how Nina Dear described Frenchy Savoy. Frenchy Savoy was a family man with a wife and two sons. He had stills from Vaughn to Augusta and was often taken into custody by the Revenuers, the Federal Prohibition Officers, that patrolled the Valley. Frenchy enlisted the help of farmers and ranchers to hide his stills. One still was located between Fairfield and Simms. A family named the Williamsons watched Frenchy’s still for him and maintained its upkeep. When they heard that the Revenuers were coming, they hid the liquor and covered the floor with leaves to cover the smell of whiskey.

Frenchy also had a still near the Birdtail. It was discovered and destroyed the Revenuers. The still shed and all the liquor was burned to the ground. The iron rings from the barrels of whiskey could be found in the area, up until a few years ago.

But Frenchy’s reign as the bartender of the Sun River Valley could not last forever. He was driven to the Belt area but was apprehended and sent to prison for eight years. Frenchy Savoy died in 1995.

“They were getting the poison off the top” (Nina Dear). Fred Dear and his brothers found one of Frenchy Savoy’s fermenting plots in a cattle grazing field. They dug through piles of manure to find bottles of fermenting whiskey. Frenchy put the bottles in the manure to let the whiskey age in the heat of the decomposing materials. The boys used a tube to drink out of the bottles. But they weren’t drinking Frenchy’s good whiskey, they were drinking the poison that settles to the top of a bottle of whiskey when it ferments. One of the boys fell into a creek on their way home and had to be saved by the others. “He would have drowned if they didn’t pull him out,” said Nina Dear. Prohibition was a dangerous time, not only because of the crime involved in bootlegging, but because of the hazards of bad booze. Fred and Nina Dear told stories of people going blind in the Valley and Great Falls from drinking straight alcohol, the results of a poor distillery job.

Frenchy Savoy and Simms were the center of Prohibition in the Sun River Valley, a time of danger, a time of Revenuers, and a time of illness caused by bad liquor. It was Frenchy’s time. It was the town of Simms’s time. It was a time in which people lived a different life. The history of Prohibition in the Sun River Valley is told through stories of Simms and Frenchy Savoy. These stores that are going to soon be gone along with the few people left that know them. And when the stories are gone, so is the history. Maybe, by telling these few stories, the tale is passed on. The history of Prohibition in the Sun River Valley can go on for at least one more generation.

Works Cited
“Prohibition,” Grolier’s Multimedia Encyclopedia. Computer Software. New York: Software Tool Work, 1992, CD-ROM
Dear, Fred and Nina, Personal Interview. 28.Feb.2000
Anderson, Eva June, Personal Interview. 28.Feb.2000