Max Licht's Mountain Dew
A possible older origin of the Mountian Dew brand?

While the feud still wages over the creation of the modern flavor of Mountain Dew, and who bottled the brand first, a recent discovery by a bottle collecting friend of mine, Mike Madden, in Knoxville Tennessee indicates that the roots of the brand run even deeper than the Hartman Beverage company of Knoxville. While there are early 1920’s filings for trademarks on the name Mountain Dew, most of them were denied on the basis of the term Mountain Dew being slang for moonshine, which is another name that has shown up on the history of soft drinks. This new find is an insert ad in a 1928 Knoxville newspaper advertising the "Dew Beverages" line which is manufactured by the M. Licht & Son Bottling Company located at 611 South Broadway in Knoxville, Tenn. The Dew Beverages line includes Grape Dew, Strawberry Dew, Root Beer Dew, and Pale Dry Ginger Ale Dew. The head line beverages advertised is Hun-nee Dew, and Mountain Dew with the tagline "A pure lemon thirst quencher (it’s sparkling white)".

M. Licht & Son Dew Beverages ad from 1928

The M. Licht & Son company had been in operation in Knoxville prior to their getting into the bottling business, since 1899 to be exact, and applied for a patent for the bottle in the ad on November 15, 1927, and was granted a Patent on January 24, 1928.(2) From the sources I have on the company from within the bottle collecting community of Knoxville, most notably Steve Hicks' "History of a Rare Knoxville Bottle" which was published in a local bottle club magazine in the early 1990's, this bottle was a quite rare Knoxville bottle(3) which would have me believe that M. Licht & Son didn’t bottle too long, and it’s bottling operation was most likely dropped due to the strains of the Great Depression. I do know that the company continues to exist to this very day manufacturing it's Smoky Mountain Sweetener.

Patent design belonging to Max Licht

So we have a Mountain Dew branded soft drink being produced and marketed in Knoxville during the latter part of the 1920's, and possibly the early 1930's, so what makes me think that this is an earlier version of the brand? Barney and Ally Hartman took over the Orange Crush franchise in Knoxville in the early 1930's and were looking for a mixer for their drinks to replace Natural Setup(1), is it not possible that they had learned about M. Licht selling off his bottling operation, including his Dew flavor line, or perhaps they were able to sample Mountain Dew at some point. Granted most of this is speculation; however, this might help explain the similarity of the name and flavor of Mountain Dew, and might even give further evidence to Dick Bridegorth's theory that the reason for the clear and green versions of the Barney and Ally Mountain Dew bottles were an attempt to produce Mountain Dew as a flavor line. Could it be that they were actually reviving the Dew Beverages line from the M. Licht days as their own, and it just didn't work?

I had often wondered why in this feud there didn't seem to be much information coming from Knoxville, allowing the descendants of the players in Johnson City, TN , and Marion, VA to lay claim to the origin of the brand, when evidence is starting to surface now that questions some of these claims. As I have said before the creation of the Mountain Dew brand can't be honestly claimed by any one group of individuals, or any one town, it was a creation of pure evolution where every player had a hand in the development of the brand. This is the first of my Mountain Dew related articles. I am fine tuning my article involving a completely unbiased, and logical, view of the legend and feud over Mountain Dew.

M. Licht Bottling Works wagon.

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