The Tazewell-Orange.com Blog

The Evolution of Double Cola

2012-02-04T14:04:00.000-08:00

Charles D. Little and Joe S. Foster created their new grape soda, Good Grape, in 1922, and at the same time created The Good Grape Company which was based in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The new brand needed a distinguishing bottle to set it apart from the other deco bottles that were hitting the selves at the same time. After an initial design which wasn’t really all that interesting, even with embossed grapes added to the design, they came up with the bottle that is best remembered as the iconic bottle for the brand. This design was a straight side design with vertical pillars running from the base to the neck with grape shaped indentions along the pillars at intervals, and on the shoulder the name embossed in an indented scroll. The Good Grape bottles usually came in a 6oz and a tougher to find 8oz bottle.

The drink originally hit the market with the tagline “Fruit of the Vine” and a mascot in the form of Cap’n Grapejack which was a kid in a pirate outfit, both seemed to disappear very quickly. The “Fruit of the Vine” tagline and the Good Grape name itself came under the scrutiny of the Federal Trade Commission who forced the company to drop the tagline, but allowed them to keep the Good Grape name, but the brand would eventually evolve into the Double Grape brand by 1927.

The Good Grape Company introduced the Jumbo Brand Quality Sugar Beverages line, Jumbo Beverages for short, which also got its own unique deco bottle whose most eye catching feature is the embossed elephant in the middle of the bottle. In 1924 the company created the Mar-vel Cola brand which featured its own unique 6 1/2oz bottle in the form of two barrels stacked on top of each other with “Mar-Vel its Marvelous” embossed on it. After the brand didn’t take off, the bottle design was re-purposed by changing the mold to create the early Double Grape bottle which had the brand name embossed in the area where the barrels connected in the middle.

According to an affidavit given by Charles Little in 1948, the name of the company is changed on to the Seminole Fruit Flavor Company on March 8th, 1928, and changed again on January 27th, 1932 to the Seminole Flavor Company. They introduced Double Orange in 1928, and Double Lemon in 1929, from all I can gather this early Double line were all bottled in the new revised version of the Mar-vel double barrel, which grew to 7 1/2oz and gained an orange peel effect on the bottle, and was embossed with Double Strength Sugar Beverage. For their other brand, which they named Brandy wine Sugar Beverage, they used the new bottle with a smooth texture, and in green glass. Of course in 1929 Double Orange and Brandy wine seem to be the flavors that the company is pushing. They even created a 26 passenger White brand advertising bus equipped with a calliope which with two 2-ton trucks, and Chief Little Bear “a Full Blooded Seminole Indian Chief”, apparently would visit the towns that housed one of their franchises from Chattanooga to Detroit in order to advertise these two drinks.

In 1934 the Seminole Flavor Company introduced to the public their second attempt at a cola with the long winded name of Jumbo A Super Cola. This bottle is a modified version of the Mar-vel bottle with a much larger upper portion which was modified to allow this bottle to incorporate the newly perfected ACL (Applied Color Label) process, and to be the first soda bottle to do so. The ACL was the word “Jumbo” in an arch over “A Super Cola” in Yellow. This new cola with the long winded name would be reformulated, doubled in size to 12oz, and renamed Double Cola in 1935, which of course would become the hit brand which would propel the company onto the national scene.

The Double Strength line would become the Double Line in the late 1930’s, and the company would move from deco bottles to ACL bottles for all their brands. The Double Cola Company is still in existence and is starting to expand their distribution area after having lost a lot of their territory in the 1980’s and 1990’s. They continue to make Double Cola, Ski (a citrus soda they created in the 1950’s), the Jumbo Beverages line, Diet Double Cola, and they have also picked up another Tennessee based brand named Chaser. They recently signed a deal to distribute the brand in Cracker Barrel restaurants. According to the company’s website Jumbo Grape is the original Good Grape formula, and Jumbo Orange is the original Double Orange formula. For more information on Double Cola check out their website at http://www.double-cola.com/ or their Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/DrinkDoubleCola

This is the earliest design for the Good Grape bottle that I have found. While the bottle itself is the same as the later version, the mid body label just didn't cut it.

Of course the reworking of the label to the scroll design was a stroke of genius. This Good Grape design is among my favorite deco bottles.

This is the bottle for the original Jumbo Beverage line. The company still uses the elephant mascot for the brand today.

"Mar-Vel it's Marvelous" thus states the bottle that was created for the company's first cola Mar-Vel Cola.

After they stopped bottling Mar-Vel Cola the bottle molds were modified for use of their newly renamed Double Grape. You can even see where they pinged out the original embossing with a hammer on the mold.


A new company name lead to many changes including new flavors including Brandy wine.

This is a Brandy Wine bottle cap.

The Double Strength line was also created from the Double Grape concept. It is very possible that the Double name was derived from their use of the Double Barrel design they used for their bottles.

This is the July 25, 1929 announcing the arrival of the coming of the Double Orange / Brandy Wine bus to Elizabethton, Tennessee which included a "big parade".


This of course is the direct ancestor of Double Cola, introduced in 1933 and using the first ACL (applied color label) found on a commercial soda bottle. Obviously inspired by the success of Pepsi-Cola's 12oz for a nickel strategy, the company would move this formula to a 12oz bottle, and Double Cola was born in the mid-1930's.

Jumbo A Super Cola unused bottle cap.


Two coupons for Jumbo A Super Cola, and Double Orange and Brandywine.

This 12oz Double Cola is from Pocahontas, VA and dated 1939

Local Milk bottles as collectible

2011-12-27T12:45:00.000-08:00

While my primary focus will always be soda bottles I have actually picked up other interesting items over the years which I normally call "Hey that's neat" items. One category of "Hey that's neat" items would be local milk bottles. It started out simple enough with the A. R. Beavers & Son bottles from Tazewell, VA; however, as my search for sodas continued it was inevitable that I would run into other milks that would interest me. That is the basic story of how this collection grew from one bottle to what it is today, which still isn't a huge collection, but fairly interesting.

half pint from the Pure Milk Company of Abingdon, VA.

Here's one you don't see everyday. A 1/4 Pint milk bottle from Rotherwood Dairy in Kingsport, Tennessee. They didn't bottle long as they signed a deal with the Pet Dairy Company in Kinsport to supply them with milk.

The Southern Maid company was a group of dairy producers who were located in Bristol & Appalachia, VA, Kingsport & Johnson City, Tennessee, and Bluefield, Welch, & Williamson WV. This example is from Bluefield, WV.

A. R. Beavers & Sons milk bottles from North Tazewell, VA these are from the 1940's.

According to my research the Tazewell County Co-op Milk Producers Association was formed in 1931 after the local dairy farms started investing heavily in new milk cows. They were hoping to make dairy goods a thriving industry in the area. The only problem was that it was the Great Depression and things didn't turn out as well as they had hoped. They had built a milk processing plant in North Tazewell where the farmers in the association would bring the milk to be bottled and processed into other dairy goods such as cheese, and butter. Unfortunately by 1933 things had gotten so bad in the industry that when the Imperial Ice Cream Company offered to buy the plant off of them, they quickly sold it. So this bottle (which is a 1931 as best as I can tell) would have only been used for two years at the most. One of the officers of the Co-op A. R. Beavers continued to produce milk himself well into the 1940's.

One of two dairies in the little town of Marion, VA is Laurel Spring Dairy. Their competition was Shanklin Dairy which I don't have a bottle for. Shanklin Diary also made Ice Cream.

If you have lived in the Southwest Virginia Northeast Tennessee area for any length of time then you have heard of Pet Dairy, due to the fact that it is the only one of these dairies that survived into modern day. This is an early acl bottle for the brand.

Created in the 1920's as the Southern Refrigeration Company in Bristol, VA, who were manufacturers of Southern Maid Ice Cream, this company would end up with several branch plants in West Virginia, Virginia, and Tennessee.

A Southern Maid Quart

Fain's Pinemont Farms from Bristol, Tennessee-Virginia.

There don't seem to be too many Southern Maid Painted Label bottles around, the usual form found are embossed examples like the ones above; however, they did produce some in the late 1930's and early 1940's.

Bristol has had several independent dairy producers throughout the years including Gray's Dairy.

Another Bristol dairy was Godsey Creamery, this 1939 ACL bottle is advertising their Holston Brand Butter

Yet another long running brand is Bassett's which also made ice cream as their 1939 ACL bottle indecates.

Pet Dairy Products bottle, no town name listed, but they had several locations in the Northeast Tennessee and Southwest Virginia area.

By the 1950's new space saving square bottles were become the norm, and these two half pints were among them. The left one is Clinch Haven Farms from Norton, VA and the Leatherwood is from Bluefield WV.

Of all the Roanoke VA dairies I have to say that I like Clover Creamery the best, mainly due to their use of a clover on their bottles. These two early bottles for the brand are some of the most interesting of all of their bottles.

One thing that grabbed me early on were Sour Cream/Cottage Cheese jars, of course my two favorites are the Clover Creamery brand from Roanoke, VA.

A recent acquisition is this 1942 ACL war time bottle which not only advertises dairy products but war bonds. It is from the Clover Creamery of Roanoke, VA as well.


Probably the most common of the Clover Dairy bottles is the 1950's green acl bottles like this half pint.

Southern Maid Ice Cream thermometer from the late 1920's.

Southern Maid Dairies ad from a 1937 Bluefield Collage Football program.

Milk and Beer, what does it have in common? Not much except that Southern Maid Dairy was distributing both in the 1930's. After Prohibition was lifted many companies that had no connection to beer started distributing it.

And those are the more interesting examples from my small milk bottle collection. I do have some others, namely a Rotherwood Dairy from Kingsport, Tennessee, and a Piedmont Dairy from Bristol; however, I may post them another time. The number one thing to take away from this post is this, collect what you like, and make sure they are interesting enough to keep your interest even after the thrill of the hunt has worn off.

Pocahontas Beverages

2011-08-20T11:11:00.000-07:00

If you have never heard of the town of Pocahontas, VA then I’m not surprised. When the Appalachian Coal boom started Pocahontas was ground zero with it’s unusually high coal seam. This little backwoods town exploded into a boom town, and of course every growing town needs a soda bottling company. While there are earlier bottlers in Pocahontas’ history one individual stands out, Nick Crist. Crist opened his Pocahontas Bottling Works operation on a small scale in 1919, equipped with a foot operated bottling machine and a wagon, which he used to deliver his sodas himself, he created a bottling business which would spend fifty years serving the coal fields of Southwest Virginia and Southern West Virginia. Throughout it’s history the company would bottle brands such as Nu-Grape, Canada Dry's Carlton Club, Spur Cola, Double Cola, Nesbitts Orange, Sunny Isles Pineapple Soda, and Sun Drop among other brands.

Of course this article isn’t about the bottling company itself, or the man, but it is actually about the Pocahontas Beverages line which it appears the company created around 1935 after Crist renamed his Nick Crist Pale Dry Ginger Ale to Pocahontas Club Ginger Ale, and produced a 7oz green embossed neck bottle for the drink. With the bottling company name being the Pocahontas Bottling Company I’m sure that they were bottling a flavor line which would be the true origins of the brand; however, the Pocahontas Club bottle is the first evidence of the name used as branding. The earliest acl bottle I have found is from 1947 and is from the period when the company was bottling Canada Dry's Spur Cola, thus calling itself the Spur Bottling Company. These early acls for the brand are a deco bottle with an applied color label and are usually 7 ½ ounces with red lettering on a white background.

The centerpiece of the label is the side profile picture of the Native American Princess Pocahontas who figures prominently in the marketing of the town, and coal company that shares her name. Of course Pocahontas is deeply ingrained in the history and legend of Virginia itself. She was the daughter of Powhatan the chief of a group of thirty Algonquin speaking tribes in tidewater Virginia. John Smith, who was among the colonists of Jamestown, was captured by Powhatan’s brother’s hunting party and was to be executed, but Pocahontas intervened on his behalf. The story has been told over and over again, and is also debated among historians as to it’s authenticity. Needless to say the legend of Pocahontas inspired the name of the town, and beverage line that sprang from it.

After the company moved from Pocahontas, VA to it’s new plant in neighboring Falls Mills they updated the label on the Pocahontas Beverages bottles. They still use the deco design of the earlier bottles; however, now have a red & white acl on a clear background. This bottle is dated 1951 and is labeled property of the Nesbitt Bottling Company of Falls Mills, VA. By 1953 a 10 ounce bottle has been added to the line and uses a different deco type style with a new all white ACL design. They are still bottling the 7 ½ ounce size that by 1963 has dropped the deco aspects in favor of a straight side design with all white acl and the portrait of Pocahontas has been applied to the shoulder as well as the main body label. This is the form that the label will take on all of the sizes of Pocahontas Beverages bottles from this point forward. The next step seems to happen in 1965 when the brand is moved to a 16 ounce size bottle. These 16 ounce bottles are the most common form of this bottle that can be found; however, I have identified at least seven variations of this bottle, most of which can be seen on my page dedicated to the Pocahontas Bottling Works on my website www.tazewell-orange.com. The 16 ounce bottle would be the standard bottle for the brand from 1965 until the closing of the bottling company after the death of Nick Crist sometime after 1982, which is the newest Pocahontas Beverages bottle I have found.

If you are interested in collecting some of these then maybe some advice is warranted. I’ve been collecting from this area for going on five years, and while some of these bottles are easy to find in the area, the 16 ounces, others have proven more difficult. The toughest one to find for me was the 1963 7 ½ ounce, I ended up purchasing one off eBay from Indiana. That’s a long way for a Pocahontas bottle to travel. The deco style 7 ½ ounce bottles are a tougher find, but are the more desirable bottles from the brand. My personal favorite is the 1953 10 ounce deco/ACL which is a tougher find than the 7 ½ ounce bottles, but well worth the effort, it is the best of these bottles. There isn’t much in the way of advertising for this brand, there are brand specific crates with white lettering on a blue background that have been showing up on eBay recently. Unfortunately there are no brand specific bottle caps for this brand as the company used generic flavor caps with the company information on the skirt. Truly a shame as the profile of Pocahontas would have made for a nice looking cap. You can read more about the company in the Pocahontas VA section of my site.

1935 Pocahontas Club bottle.

1947 Pocahontas Beverages bottle.

1951 Pocahontas Beverages Bottle.

1953 10oz Pocahontas Beverages bottle.

1960 7 1/2oz Pocahontas Beverages bottle.

16oz Pocahontas Beverages bottle.

Pocahontas Beverages crate.

A cola brand of their own: a brief history of Kroger's Wescola.

2011-06-09T18:22:00.000-07:00

Back in the early 1990’s I used to work for my local Kroger Grocery store as a bag boy. One of my duties was to go to the back and work the returned bottles. Yes we were still using returnable bottles in the early 90’s. Little did I know that this experience would come back to me later in life as a bottle collector. What was an annoying job now fascinates me. Of course the connection to Kroger would rear its head while some friends and I were digging in a dump a couple of years back. We happened upon several Wescola deco style bottles and our only clue to who produced them was the embossing on the bottom “Wesco Foods Cincinnati Ohio”. Figuring they have come in via train from there I didn’t think much of them; however, I got curious one day and looked up the company. It turns out that Wesco Foods was a branch of the Kroger Grocery Company, and that Wescola was Kroger’s attempt at creating their own cola brand.

Wescola was part of the Kroger Latonia Club line which would evolve into today’s Big K line of soft drinks. The majority of the Latonia Club line was actually paper label straight side bottles with very few surviving into modern day; however, Wescola for some reason was different. Kroger produced a specially designed embossed deco bottle for the brand. Deco bottles were a type of bottle that was popular during the 1920’s into the 1950’s and would either be embossed with some pattern or have its own unique shape. Wescola was the latter. The brand seems to have started being produced around 1937, which corresponds with the dates on the bottles themselves. The advertising of the time noted that it was their “new cola drink”. Unfortunately although the name shows up a lot from 1937 until the late 1940’s in their advertising, I’ve only found one actual ad that pictures the bottles themselves.

Early Latonia Club 24oz Lime Rickey paper label label.

8oz Wescola deco bottle dated 1937.

Wescola bottle cap from Detroit Michigan. Wesco Foods had three different branches which included Chicago, Detroit, and Cincinnati Ohio.

Big K Cola as it exists today, I wonder if this is the same formula as Wescola after all these years.

Fading signs that I have found in my research.

2011-05-28T21:43:00.000-07:00

As I search for the locations of these long gone bottlers, I happen upon some ghosts from their vibrant past. These come in the form of painted wall signs and many of them can be interesting. Here are some that I have found so far and where I found them.

This is the wall of the Jones Vance Drug Company in Johnson City, Tennessee.

Just across the street from the Jones Vance building is this sign which was partially covered by another smaller building until a few years ago.

To give you a sense of age of this particular sign here is a photo showing the newly built building that helped preserve the bottom part of the sign, as you can tell from the cars this sign is quite early.

This is a sign just off of State Street in downtown Bristol, VA. I would love to see this one restored. It's huge!

Also in Bristol is this newer Enjoy Coke sign, even a sign this new is in danger of fading into history.

This sign is on a store in an area of Tazewell County Virginia known as Baptist Valley. You don't often see Upper 10 painted wall signs.

On the other side of the same building is this RC cola sign, you can even see the older sign ghosting through the present paint.

This is a store just outside the town of Tazewell, VA. Like the Baptist Valley sign there is ghosting from an earlier sign showing through the present sign.

It's one thing to find national brands such as Coke, Pepsi, or RC, but it is an entirely different thing to find a local brand painted on a wall. This is Rhythm Punch a grape soda produced only by the Sun Rise Bottling Company which was located in Tazewell, VA. This sign is on both sides of the building shown above.

Below that sign was this metal 7-up sign long since rusted into oblivion.

Now this is an interesting ghost sign indeed from Pocahontas, VA. For some reason there is a part of the building that is either missing or the sign extended out from the building. It was covered up by another building for a long time and that building is now gone revealing this.

As I was prowling around a road just outside of Princeton, WV, I ran upon this sign on the side of this long shuttered store. There wasn't really enough room to get off the road properly.

Very near the railroad depot in Princeton, WV is this sign. I wish I could read the rest of the sign, but very little remains aside from the obvious.

K. B. Co. embossed on the bottom, the bottles from the Keystone Bottling Company of West Virginia

2011-03-23T20:03:00.000-07:00

The Keystone Bottling Company, whose principal office was located in Keystone, West Virginia, was incorporated on February 2, 1907. The stockholders of the company was C. S. Angel of North Fork W. VA, C. C. Hale of Keystone, VA, C. W. Elliot of North fork, W. VA, W. E. Stuart of Keystone, W. VA, and T. W. Zink of Keystone, W. VA. This company was comprised of a group of bottlers with branches in Keystone, W. VA, Welch, W. VA, Williamson, W. VA, North Fork, W. VA, and finally Bluefield, W. VA. The main product of this bottling group was Coca-Cola, and would add Nu-Grape in the middle 1920’s. This bottling group identified its bottles not by using a town name on them, except in certain cases, but by using the initials K. B. Co. which is usually located on the bottom of the bottles including their Coca-Cola Bottles. The company would be renamed the Northfork Coca-Cola Bottling Company by the late 1920’s, and would create a bottler in Rock, W. VA known as the Rock Mineral Springs Bottling Company.

Thanks to the good folks at Coca-Cola in Bluefield WV, I now have a photo of the C. W. Elliot Company of Northfork, WV. This building was also the corporate offices of the Keystone Bottling Company group.

1913 Coca-Cola Soda Water bottle from the Keystone Bottling Company.

1916 Coca-Cola bottle from the Keystone Bottling Company

1923 C. C. Soda Water from the Bluefield Bottling Company which was part of the Keystone Bottling Company

1924 C. C. Soda Water from the Flat Top Bottling Company of Welch, WVA which was part of the Keystone Bottling Company

November 16, 1915 patented hobble skirt Coca-Cola bottle from the Keystone Bottling Company

1927 deco bottle from the Bluefield Bottling Company

1930 Big Bottle from the C. W. Elliot Company of Northfork, WVA which was part of the now named Northfork Coca-Cola Bottling Company.

1937 Big Bottle from the Welch Coca-Cola Bottling Company, former Flat Top Bottling Company, of Welch, WVA which is also part of the Northfork Coca-Cola Bottling group.


Dixie Beverages bottle from Northfork, WVA, which is most likely part of the company as well.

And that's all of them I hope you enjoyed the bottles from the Keystone / Northfork Coca-Cola Bottling Company bottling group.

Bottles from Roanoke, VA

2011-03-09T21:59:00.000-08:00

Roanoke had quite a few bottlers over the years, and several Roanoke based brands such as Lemon Kola, King Cola, 3-C Nectar, and Dixie-Ola. Unfortunately none of them survived to the modern day; however, the evidence of their existence still survives in the form of bottles and other go with items. Here are just a few of them.

The Roanoke Bottling & Cider Company would eventually become the Pepsi-Cola Bottling Company of Roanoke, VA according to James C. Ayers' Pepsi=Cola book.

King Cola was a Roanoke based drink during the late teens. They were sued by Coca-Cola and lost.

3-C Nectar was created by the Columbia Chemical Corporation (get it?) in the early 1920's and within three years was out of business. The brand was bottled as far away as Philadelphia, PA and Coney Island, NY.

Dixie-Ola was created around 1928 by the Roanoke Extract & Bottling Company.

A cap from the company found in Mouth of Wilson, VA, it may be possible that they bottled the brand at some point or just purchased the company's bottle cap stock after they went out of business.

Two Orange Crush bottles from the 1930's.

A late 1930's Pop Kola marked "the property of L. L. Rice" who later owned Rice's Bottling Company; however, by this point his company was known as the Big Bill Bottling Company.

Grapette from Rice's Bottling Company of Roanoke, VA. Lawrence L. Rice would open up branch plants in Johnson City, Tennessee, and Jacksonville, Florida.

1940 Pop Kola bottle from Rice's Bottling Company of Roanoke, VA

A Clicquot Club Beverages bottle from the 1950's. I don't know much about the company that bottled this one.

A 1959 Pepsi Cola bottle from Roanoke, VA. Knowing that L. L. Rice owned the Johnson City, Tenn. Pepsi Cola bottling company, I wonder if he owned the company in Roanoke, VA as well.

Frankie's Beverages bottle from the Frankie's Bottling Company of Roanoke, VA. According to the information given me by one of the owner's relatives, this company is the same one that was bottling the Orange Crush bottles pictured above.

You don't see too many of these mid 60's with town names, but here is one from the Double Cola Bottling Company of Roanoke, VA.

Oak Lane Dairy opened in Roanoke, VA in 1935, which is about the right time period for this early ACL (Applied Color Label) Mission Orange drink bottle.

Still don't know the source of this 1941 Fruit Beverage Company bottle from Roanoke, VA; however, it could be associated with the Mission above or the Bireley's below. All three would have been non-carbonated fruit flavored drinks.

There is a photo of downtown Roanoke, VA out there with a billboard ad for Bireley's Orange Drink, and here is the bottle.

Bottles from Christiansburg, VA and Radford, VA

2011-02-26T15:19:00.000-08:00

Radford, VA actually has a connection to my area in the personage of Isaac Greenspon who ran the Radford Ice Company which also bottled at one point. Greenspon would eventually become a partner in an ice plant in Pocahontas with the Kwass brothers, and after that enterprise dissolved, created the Isaac Greenspon Manufacturing Company in Bluefield, WV where he made candy and bottled soft drinks in the teens. The bottles shown are some that I found interesting, like most of these semi-locals tend to be, and are from the Cassco Bottling Works. This bottling company was a part of the Cassco Refrigerating Corporation, which was an Ice maker based in Harrisonburg, VA. They had several branches two of which had bottling operations, which Radford appears to be the first of, and the other was located in Waynesboro, VA.

A 7oz Cassco Beverages dated 1945. This one only lists Radford, VA as the bottler.


A 7oz Cassco Beverages bottle dated 1946. They changed the label design and obviously opened another bottling branch in Waynesboro, VA.

Christiansburg, VA is just a few miles away from Radford, VA, and as it turns out was much more successful as a bottling town, including the creation of their own Coca-Cola imitator, Banner Cola. The Christiansburg Banner Cola Corporation was incorporated on November 1, 1919, with J. W. Pepper listed as President, and P. L. Kenley as Vice President. This company appears to have lasted for several decades with bottles dating as late as the 1950's. It is possible that the Banner Cola Corporation started out as the Christiansburg Bottling Works, and after the creation of their new leader brand changed their name. The strangest bottle is the Cloverdale Soft Drink bottle from the Norment Bottling Company, Inc. of Roanoke and Christiansburg, VA which is dated 1964. I can find no information on this bottler which sounds like it had a main plant in Roanoke, VA and a branch in Christiansburg, or visa versa.

Very early Christiansburg Bottling Works bottle.

A 7oz Banner Cola Corporation straight side slug plate bottle

8oz Banner Cola Corporation deco bottle from the early 1930's

12oz Banner Brand Beverages dated 1939

7ox green Banner Brand Beverages bottle dated 1951

10oz Cloverdale Soft Drinks bottle from the Norment Bottling Company, Inc. of Roanoke and Christiansburg, VA dated 1964

1941 Banner Cola Corporation sales receipt dated August 14, 1941

Bottles from Erwin, Tenn. and Greenville, Tenn.

2011-02-23T12:02:00.000-08:00

From time to time I will pick up what I call Semi-Local Bottles, which are bottles that don't exactly fit into my area, but are in neighboring areas. Usually these will be bottles I happen to find interesting for one reason or another. First up is one from the town of Greenville, Tennessee, it is a Kist Beverages bottle from 1951. Kist was a national brand flavor line much in the vein of Nehi. The reason I picked up this bottle was that the bottling company that produced the brand actually distributed and advertised it in Kingsport, Tennessee, which is in my area.

A 1951 Kist Beverages bottle from the Greenville Kist Bottling Company of Greenville, Tennessee.

The 1950 ad from the Kingsport Times advertising Kist's Chocolate drink.

Another East Tennessee town with a bottler was Erwin, Tennessee this bottling company was actually a fairly early bottler in the area which had lasted for at least twenty to thirty years before they were producing the bottle shown below. Julep beverages was also an older national flavor line brand dating from the teens.

A 1943 Julep Full Flavor Beverages 12oz bottle.

Bottles from Knoxville, Tennessee

2011-02-13T17:24:00.000-08:00

One of my largest collection of semi-locals is from Knoxville, Tennessee.

A late 1800's Hutchinson bottle from the Howell & Fox Bottling Company of Knoxville, Tenn.

Tenn-Cola Bottling Works, and Knoxville Bottling Company slug plate bottles

Eye-Se was an early Nu-Grape flavor line, this was replaced by the Nu-Icy flavor line.

An eight ounce Orange Crush bottle from Knoxville.

The ad announcing the introduction of Royal Crown Ginger Ale to Knoxville, Tennessee. You didn't know that Royal Crown was a flavor line before the introduction of Royal Crown Cola in 1936 did ya?

Another of the Nu-Grape flavor lines was the Five Points Beverages line these were prominent in the 1930's and early 1940's until it was replaced with the Sun Crest brand.

A real nice swimsuit 7-up bottle from the early 1950's

From the same company comes this brownie soda bottle which was a chocolate drink.

Kist was a long running line, and actually still existed a couple of years ago. It might have been discontinued since then.

A 10oz Mil-Kay from The Hartman Beverage Company of Knoxville.

An 8 3/4 oz Mil-Kay from The Hartman Beverage Company of Knoxville.


An 8 3/4oz Hartman Beverages bottle from The Hartman Beverage Company of Knoxville.

I'll edit this post with new additions as I acquire them or take pictures of the ones that I haven't posted here.

Roanoke ads from a 1921 musical program

2011-02-13T15:25:00.000-08:00

I found an interesting item on a hunt in Roanoke, VA this weekend and thought I would share some ads from it as I don't cover Roanoke, VA; however, feel the need to share these. The program is from a musical produced by the Kazim Temple of the Shriners organization called "The House Boat On The Sticks" which was preformed at the Academy of Music on February 17, 18, and 19, 1921. While this thing is just chocked full of ads I personally am only interested in the ones that pertain to bottling or have connections to bottling. I guess you could say that this blog is going to replace the Semi-Local section of my website. This section is where I would post pictures of bottles, ads, and give what little information I had dug up about bottlers in other areas outside my area. Roanoke is one of those.

This was the reason I picked up this item in the first place, a great 3-C Nectar ad.

My second favorite would have to be this Chero-Cola ad. I didn't even realize that Roanoke, VA had a Chero-Cola bottler until seeing this ad.

I love this one as well as it features a drawing of the November 6, 1915 hobble skirt bottle, which was the first of the now iconic "hobble skirt" Coca-Cola bottles. Another interesting thing is the notation beside the price of "No War Tax" I'm assuming they are referring to the first world war which had ended a few years prior to this ad.

Though I'm not a huge milk bottle fan I have picked up several milk bottles during the time period of my collecting bottles, and Clover Creamery bottles are fairly prominent in that collection. I have several different ones including two different cottage cheese jars. I will post these at some point now that I have a location to post items that aren't covered by the website itself.


That's right a car company, but not just any car company. This car company was started by a former bottler out of Bristol, VA who left that town in the 1890's for Roanoke, VA where he eventually started up this dealership, his name was J. W. Waynick.

Eventually I will have moved all the semi-local bottles from my site to this blog. I like picking up interesting bottles from other areas that border my main collecting area, and this is looking like the best place for items such as this. I hope you enjoyed seeing a moment in Roanoke Bottling history from 1921.

Diversification and collecting

2011-02-09T22:20:00.000-08:00

Collecting diversification can be both a blessing and a curse. I am a collector. Which if I am honest with myself boils down to my having a hereditary hoarding gene, but I realized early that I needed to focus that gene, so I started collecting. Why do I collect? All humans have an inborn need for the thrill of the hunt, and that is what drives me. I actually have several collections/interests, some major, some minor, a few have been with me since I was a child like the Star Wars action figure collection. Some I have picked up over the years as my interests changed, the record collection would fit into this category.

Yet some evolve from the buying of what I call "Hey that's neat" items. The soda collection is one of those. I usually pick up "Hey that's neat" items when I can't find anything that I am actually full bore collecting at that particular moment, or a good source of "go with" items opens up that I can't ignore. Lately with the lack of interesting bottles, and an new source, has given rise to my picking up soda advertising signs. I've always liked this type of advertising, and had planned on getting into it, but they are usually far too expensive for my tastes. Then enters a source which has been fairly reasonable in their prices and I'm hooked, for the moment at least. You can really only spare room for so many of these. Here are some of the signs that I have acquired over the past four months.

This was the first one I picked up. I'd always liked these button signs; however, the more common Coca-Cola ones were just far too dull for me to own. I do like the Dr. Pepper 10, 2, 4 promotion and the font is from the right period.


Next and so far most expensive was this near mint Botl'o sign. Botl'o was the flavor line of the Grapette company during the 1940's and 1950's.

This is a sign for Mil-Kay which was an orange drink from the 1940's and 50's

This cardboard sign is advertising Ski-Hi Grape which was a flavor line produced by the Orange Crush Company in the 1920's and 30's.

This plastic Grapette sign is most likely from the 1960's. Even though it wouldn't be worth much, one thing to look for in soda advertising is if there is a bottle pictured.


Last but not least is this small Pop Kola sign which is most likely from the 1940's.

To have an interesting collection you need to diversify, because it helps on those hunting trips where you don't find anything. It just gives you that thrill of satisfaction of finding something that strikes your interest. Who knows it could propel you into a whole new aspect of a present collection, or create a new collection altogether. Yet then again you could end up with far too many collections than your wallet can handle, or your abode for that matter. Collecting is fun, but sometimes you have to know when to let go of certain things as well.

Happy hunting,

Joseph Lee III

Introductions and explainations

2011-02-09T19:18:00.000-08:00

I am a collector of vintage soft drink bottles, and a researcher of soda bottlers with a coverage area which includes Southwest Virginia, Northeast Tennessee, and Mercer County West Virginia. I also write the occasional article pertaining to some local brand or other soda related item which isn't necessarily covered by this area, but either has connections to or was bottled in this area. The main website for this is www.tazewell-orange.com.

I have often had the desire to talk about the process and experiences I have encountered throughout my time researching these companies, but didn't feel these subjects belonged in the basic information that makes up the main site. So I have created this blog for just that purpose. I will be discussing anything that I run into either collecting the bottles, which will include my adventures digging bottles, and also finding the information which is posted on the main site itself.

This may include my recent finds, and maybe even some non-related local stuff including milk bottles, local businesses which catch my fancy, whatever.

Let me say welcome to the Tazewell-Orange.com blog.

Joseph lee