Prohibition, Rum Runners, and Al Capone
Near Miami, Florida
During Prohibition, when the making and selling of liquor was banned across the United States, Miami became one of the wettest cities in a supposedly dry nation. The island of Bimini sat just fifty miles off the coast, stacked with warehouses of legal Bahamian liquor, and a fleet of fast boats ran the bottles across the Gulf Stream under cover of night. Powered by surplus aircraft engines, these speedboats could outrun almost anything the government put on the water.
A case that cost around eighteen dollars in the Bahamas sold for roughly double that in South Florida, and far more up north, and the trade minted quick fortunes. Into this wide open town came the most notorious gangster in America. In nineteen twenty eight, Al Capone bought a walled estate at Ninety Three Palm Avenue on Palm Island, in his wife's name.
He poured a fortune into the property, adding a high wall, floodlights, and a grand swimming pool overlooking Biscayne Bay. Capone ran his criminal empire from afar, but Miami became his refuge from the Chicago winters and the Chicago law. He died in that Palm Island house on January twenty fifth, nineteen forty seven, his mind ruined by disease, far from the streets he once controlled.
