Camden Police Chief Boyd Woody is planning to open Ouachita County’s first modern liquor distillery, where he will produce moonshine, tequila, rum, vodka and whiskey, Arkansas Business reports. 316 Distillery will be located in a 3,000 square-foot building at 1292 Hwy. 278 W in Camden. Woody and his spouse, Kaye Woody, hope to open sometime this summer.

The Arkansas Business report states that Woody doesn’t have any prior experience in commercial liquor manufacturing but he brews beer and has friends in the industry like Bobby and Lauren Glaze, owners of Camden’s Native Dog Brewing. A couple months before the Glazes opened Native Dog Brewing near the banks of the Ouachita River in 2021, they told the Arkansas Times the closest brewery to Camden was 93 miles away in Hot Springs.

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As for opening a distillery while continuing his job as police chief, he acknowledged that “some people find that odd, so, let me tell you, the first thing I did, being in law enforcement, being the chief of police, was in fact make sure there wasn’t any type of conflict with my current position and this one [distillery owner] and there’s not.”

Woody told Arkansas Business that he’s wanted to do this for “quite a few years,” and he wanted to get it started to have something to do after his eventual retirement “in the next, probably, four years or so from my everyday job.”