UPDATES

10-25-15 An update long in coming, but mainly due to a lull in new information after the large influx this time last year. There are of course new bottles, a new photo of a bottling plant, and a few other things that I can’t remember.

10-13-14 It has been a long time since the last update, the main reason being that as soon as I finished a new update I would find new information that would impact the site. This time we have a complete update of the Max Licht’s Mountain Dew article. We have new information on Dr. Enuf as a result of my research for Dick Bridgeforth. We have information on the grand opening of the Tip Bottling Company of Johnson City. Speaking of Johnson City we have three new bottlers for that town including the solving of the mystery of the G. R. B. Hutchinson bottles. There is much more which I actually forget since it has been such a long process.

2-23-14 This update finalizes, well until I find more information, my research into a lost coal town in Mercer County West Virginia. Why? Because they had a bottling plant of course. The name of this town is Cephas West Virginia.

1-26-14 The first update of the new year. A few items have been added, and a few new acquisitions have replaced older bottle photos of bottles I didn’t own at the time. That isn’t the biggest addition to the website this time. We have an entire new company listed in the Bluefield VA section. I’m talking about the Bluefield Beverage Company, which unfortunately closed in 2012, but I felt they deserved their place in the history of bottling in the two Bluefields.

12-03-13 The final leg of this complete website update is finished with Johnson City, and Elizabethton, Tennessee. Of course there will be come more changes in the near future as I have found out things throughout this two year process which I wouldn’t include until the full reconstruction was finished.

9-29-13 Well here it is the Kingsport update featuring for the first time Kingsport’s actual first bottler The Howard Milling Company which I was saving due to very little info, and the lack of a bottle photo. That’s what is driving part of this overhaul, finally including that which I have very little knowledge of, but even then some come out of the woodwork as recently happened in Pocahontas, VA. So my job is never really done. Also I have included the Giant Food Markets beverage line as people have asked me about that one since the Giant Food Market chain is based in Kingsport, and the cans and bottles claim to be from there….but they aren’t. I’ve already started Johnson City which is going to take a while as I have two bottlers down there that I’ve not mentioned before, and need to try to get more info about.

8-25-13 That took less time than expected, and now the Bristol section of my site is updated. Updated with new information, new pictures, and totally rewritten. I’m guessing that Kingsport will be next. I’m saving Johnson City for last, because it’s huge.

7-25-13 Wow it has been a while since the last big update, granted there have been smaller ones along the way, but here it is the next town to get a re-write, Marion, VA. This took a while since it features one of the longest running bottling companies in our area, the Marion Bottling Company, and I frankly dreaded re-writing that one. Some new information has come to light, such as Dr. Pepper of Marion being the owners of the Sun Flower trademark, which I only discovered a couple of months ago. Also confirmation that my Blue Ridge Ginger Ale glass is indeed from Marion with a letterhead, and the trademark, showing that that particular font was indeed the original font for the brand name. Some updated information on the backgrounds of Clay F. Church and N. S. Forester. New photos, new bottles, new ads, new bottling caps what more can you ask? Since there isn’t much new on the Abingdon, or Damascus front we move on to the toughest part of my endeavor, the tri-cities area, so that means Bristol is next.

4-7-13 Well here it is the updated pages from Wise County Virginia, with new information, new previously not listed bottling companies, and new photos and bottles. As there isn’t anything new in the areas of Gate City, Fort Blackmore, or the St. Charles/ Pennington Gap area, I have already started working on Marion, VA of which Dr. Pepper and the Marion Bottling Works are done which leaves the Marion Orange Crush Bottling Company, Marion Bottling Company, 3-C Nectar, and the Tip Corporation. So hopefully I’ll be posting those in a month or so. Then it starts really getting slow as I start in on the Tri-Cities area of Tennessee. There are a lot of bottlers there, and I still haven’t even visited the Washington County Court House in Jonesboro Tn to research the records on Johnson City. Hopefully I’ll find some interesting stuff there and maybe answer a few questions of my own.

8-12-12 I can now add Graham/Bluefield, VA, Pocahontas, VA, Tazewell, VA (haven’t changed anything on the Sunrise/Was-cott page, the new write up for it will premer in Soda Spectrum magazine), Richlands, VA, Cleveland, VA, Castlewood, VA, Vansant, VA, and Haysi, VA. I will be starting on Wise County next, and moving on from there. Don’t forget to check out the Tazwell-Orange.com Blog, and my Vintage Soda Group on Facebook.

7-1-12 I know that there hasn’t been much activity as of late, but I have been feeling as of late that it was time for some reconstruction on the site. This will involve rewriting much of the information, including new information, including new bottlers that I have known about, but not enough about to determine if they were just failed attempts, new names for existing bottlers, or just outright mistakes on the part of the sources reporting their existence. I also have a new photography set up which I will be using to try to update the photos on the site. This is going to take quite a bit of time as I am having to do this on an as can basis; however, starting from the top of my town list I have updated the Rock, WV, Princeton, WV (including a previously unknown to me canning entity that was part of the Pepsi-Cola Bottling Company there), Bluefield, WV, and am working on the Bluefield/Graham VA page now. I have also stopped using background images on the pages in favor of just using colors due to issue with them stopping before the end of some of the longer pages. So far this summer I have found new bottles and will be posting them soon. Don’t forget to check out the Tazwell-Orange.com Blog, and my Vintage Soda Group on Facebook.

11-06-11 This year has been slow as far as my research has gone. While I have found tidbits and bottles here and there and have been including them as I get the chance, for the most part I really haven’t announced them. Aside from a new article on Mil-Kay, the creation of the Tazewell-Orange.com blog which I have posted the semi-local sections on, along with short articles on the soda collecting hobby in general, and other odd things that I felt would, and were cluttering up the main site. There you can find my article on Pocahontas Beverages (which was published in Soda Spectrum magazine), West Virginia Coal Fields deco bottles, Soda advertising signs, the semi-locals and other topics which happen to interest me but don’t fit into the scope of Tazewell Orange. Future ideas for articles will involve one of my growing “Hey that’s neat item” collections, local milk bottles. If you are on facebook don’t forget to look up my “Vintage Soda Group”, where I post other things that I pick up and find interesting, but don’t feel I need to write up something on. As for personal news, I joined the State of Franklin Bottle club based in the Johnson City, Tennessee area.

01-17-11 It’s been a long time since the last large update; however, I have been updating all the time, just nothing huge. This update sees the inclusion of two new articles The Story of King Cola, and the long promised Mountain Dew article entitled "Mountain Dew: Logic VS Legend Part One Who first commercially bottled Mountain Dew?" Where I take on the official story that claims Mountain Dew was first bottled by Tri-City Beverage in December 1954 and Hartman Beverage followed suit in 1955, while Hartman Beverage claimed to have done it in October 1948 and even ordered acl bottles in 1951, and this will lead into my examination of the bottle evidence to see what the bottles are actually telling us about the stored in a warehouse legend.

07-03-10 So much is different this update time. There are new bottles in several locations, including a new deco from Bluefield, a new straight side coke from Norton, VA, and a new Pepsi-Cola from Bristol. I have been to the Sullivan County Courthouse and have gone through their records, as well as the Mercer County Courthouse. The biggest change of all is that Rock, WV is no longer a semi-local page, where I just display a few bottles I own from the town, but is now part of the actual research area. This town includes a Roxa Kola franchise bottler, the Smith Bottling Company (which I don‘t have any info on yet), and possibly the most famous bottler The Rock Mineral Springs Company which made the Rock Cliff brand of soft drinks.

05-31-10 I know it’s been a long time since I did an update on the site, well one I mentioned anyway, but here it is the big update. I have added a new bottling company to the Princeton, WV section, which was a combination garage and bottler from 1914. There are new bottles galore, updates to quite a few town sections, new bottles in the semi-local section, and even two new towns Radford, VA and Christiansburg, VA. The 3-C Nectar article has been updated with a couple of new eBay sightings, and a bottle from Graham, VA and Winchester, VA. I have found new information on the Clinch Valley Bottling Company of Richlands, VA and even an ad for the company listing the flavors bottled by them in 1910. New information on the Appalachia Bottling Company as well, and that is the majority that I can think of. As I said, I have updated so much that I just can’t remember it all.

02-14-10: Quite a few new pictures in Appalachia, Kingsport, Johnson City, Marion, and on the Tip Beverages page amongst others. The big additions are the Max Licht Mountain Dew article where a 1928 advertisement from a Knoxville, TN paper sheds new light on the possible true origins of the Mountain Dew brand. The next is an article on a local bottle that is well known to local collectors, the famous Lonesome Pine Beverages brand. Don’t just wait for these updates as I am constantly adding something to this website and never make any mention of what has been added. You never know what is going to show up next.

01-17-10 Not a huge amount of updates this time, I have updated the Tenn-Cola Bottling Company of Kingsport site, both the Kingsport page and Big Stone Gap page are the same now as you will see when you read the information. This one still puzzles me as they have Kingsport Tenn. as part of the name, but every piece of evidence I have found about the company points to it’s main office and bottling plant being in Big Stone Gap although the companies’ president lives in Kingsport. There has to be more to the story of this company, I’ll keep digging. New information has been added to the Dixie Coca-Cola site, I have added a picture to the Princeton Bottling and Ice company site, it is a crate from the Princeton Bottling Works. I have a new bottle from Coca-Cola of Bluefield, yet another of the 16oz Pocahontas variations (that’s nine now), two 10oz Coca-Cola variations for the Vansant, VA site, and updated pictures for Pepsi of Norton, 7 up of Bristol. Last but not least is the Lemon Kola article that I just posted. I plan on continuing to research this brand as well as King Cola and Tenn-cola.

11-26-09 I know it's been a while since my last update, the delay was due to so much information coming in and very little time to work it all in. I still have much to work in and more coming in very soon; however, it's time to get a post up. I have been hitting the old Bluefield Newspapers lately which actually led to some information and ads gathered for that area, changes made are in Pocahontas VA, Bluefield, VA, Graham, VA, Bluefield WV, and even Princeton WV. I even found a couple of bottlers that were as yet unknown to me until this research brought them forward, those being the Cane Cola Bottling Company of Graham, VA, and the Epping Bottling Company branch plant in Graham, VA. I have also finally found enough information on the F. P. Cummings bottles from Pocahontas, VA to launch that page in that area. F. P. Cummings is looking to be the very first soda bottler in that area, also check out the Pocahontas Liquor section for a Pabst Brewing Company bottle from Pocahontas, VA and the new information on the branch beer bottling houses of Pocahontas. In Appalachia I have created a page for the Virginia Wholesale Company's Bottling Works which I finally verified bottles from. For you Johnson City collectors, I've finally gotten serious about searching through the microfilms of that city, I have updates on most of those bottlers. I also started a section on Elizabethton TN. bottling companies.

09-12-09: I've been very busy lately. I have updated all of the Marion site, including better images of the ads, and some updated information on Dr. Pepper of Marion. I also visited Lee County last week and found more information on the bottling companies of St. Charles and Pennington Gap, VA. There are various other updates all over the site, but the most important of all is a new section called collections where I can post pictures of the bottles I own that have very little or nothing to do with my local area. I already have the Mountain Dew page, Mountain Dew Imitators page, Cheerwine, and ND/NR pages up already. I have some new information on the Tip brand and will update that soon.