Better Return Those Pop Bottles

Checked Your Bottom Lately?

Since Rick started this subject, here is another ad I researched for a soda water bottle collector, this gives you a better understanding of how this came about.

A while back I wrote a post titled “The Blue Soda Hole”. Basically a couple of hombres and I dug a small gold rush pit late one afternoon and recovered several blue sodas with iron pontil bases. When we finished the pit it was getting dark and I snapped a couple of pictures to possibly use in a post for this blog. When I posted the pictures on the blog I referred to the blue sodas as having “red iron pontils” – That was before I really examined one of the bottles.
After giving one of the Mineral Waters a nice warm bath I noticed that it didn’t have a red iron pontil after all. What it had was red paint over the iron pontil..... Very interesting I thought and left it at that.

A few days, or weeks, or it could have been longer or sooner (I have a time space thing happening as I get older) I mentioned the painted bottom sodas to Warren in a casual conversation. Of course Warren had seen sodas with painted bottoms, and in fact, knew why the bottoms were painted (which didn’t surprise me one little bit).

It seems that while doing research for his upcoming book Warren ran across an ad for Phil Caduc telling the public to take notice that his genuine Napa Soda had the bottoms of the bottles “painted white”. What I thought Caduc was really saying was that all those white painted soda bottles belonged to him and he sure as heck wanted them back after you had polished off the contents. And this got me to thinking.......

.............Oh boy another mystery to try and unravel, might as well add it to the date and time of the western curved “R”, the Fish’s Infallible western or eastern brain twister, the Mlasko T*M western star and Dale’s maybe it just might be possible that the Chalmer’s Catawba Wine Bitters is a 25th anniversary of the discovery of gold in California bottle theory. Wow..... Its no wonder I have this time – space thing happening.

Warren also mentioned that he had seen other bottles with different colors painted on the bottoms and possibly the reason for the different colors were the bottles belonged to different merchants.

Here we go.....

Three red bottom sodas (and three other broken examples) recovered from the same gold rush era stage stop privy, all possibly purchased from the same merchant somewhere along the stage route who is probably, to this day, still mad about not getting his bottles back! ....Makes sense to this old geezer

The bitters market was quite competitive, the papers were full of advertisements for such products as Rosenbaum's, Renz's, Henley's, Cassin's & Lacour's bitters; yet when the collectors are avidly seeking examples of these bottles through various means, few seem to be found with any real regularity. With thousands of examples being distributed through drugstores, saloons, wholesale & retail liquor merchants; why hasn't more examples been unearthed?

A reason might be a crowded market for these products. Although most collectors covet the embossed in glass named bitters containers made during the 1860's & '70's period there were in fact many other bitters products competiting for a share of this market. In fact the above three bitters advertisements were quite prevalent among the major newspapers of the late '60's and '70's and probably accounted for a great deal of sales. Many of these containers were and are being dug by collectors without knowing it, since these products were put up in labeled only bottles for much of their sales period.

The exact number of western marketed bitters products are not known at present, there are approximately 100 variations of embossed in glass bitters containers, with another 58 or so known in paper labeled form only. In my research to write a more precise, accurate and comprehensive story on some of these bitters; I've also uncovered some new never before listed bitters marketed in California, such as Manzanita Bitters, Democratic Bitters & California Buck Bitters.

So when your digging and you unearth a round or a square unembossed fifth or sixth size bottle, you may indeed have dug yourself a bitters!

Unsolved Mystery of the None Genuine Bottle...

So far the evidence is quite minimal and speculative as to what type of product these containers held...Was it a bitters of some sort? We may never know. Due to the shapes (two variations) these come in, it does not seem to fit in with the typical bitters mold types.

I'm most inclined to lean towards a sarsaparilla, cordial, tonic, or some sort of cure/medicine. Nonetheless, these rare bottles do seem to be found throughout the West and no reports thus far from the East-side. Pictured below are the two distinct shapes of the examples that I have been able to find. The one on the left is of similar shape to a Hood's Sarsaparilla and is smaller and shorter than it's counterpart on the right. The rounded-shoulder example bears a similar resemblance in shape to a Warner's Safe Cure.


Resemblance to a Warner's Safe Cure mold:

From what I've been able to account for, here are the number of currently "known" examples:

J.F. CUTTER EXTRA: 1 Rectangular in Honey-Amber (Mint), 1 Rounded-Shoulder in Honey-Amber (Large Crack on back). Locality: (Los Angeles, Montana Mining Camp).
Dr. Barnes: 1 Rectangular in Amber. Locality: (Ebay).
RTSIRI: 1 Rectangular in Aqua. 1 Rectangular in Amber. Locality: SAC??
OLD CUTTERS: 1 Rectangular in Amber, Any others? Locality: SAC
MILLER'S EXTRA: 1 Rectangular in Amber? Locality: OR?
R. Littlefield: Had a rectangular amber example up for sale for awhile...Locality: WA or OR??

Rarity (in any Condition): 7+ Rectangular-shaped examples; 1-3 Rounded-Shoulder Examlpes

Overall Locality/Distribution: Sacramento, Los Angeles, Portland, Montana...

OLD CUTTERS, You seemed to know the most about the different colors and number of examples from the folks I've spoken with. Do you know of any other Mint examples or specimens out there?

None Genuine #2, Two, Too

Great Med, I know of 2 others of these, both on the border in Dago, mine and the lighter colored one in the Lance W. collection, all have Great Embossing, Thanks for the background info Richard, I was told when I got mine it was a Western Med., but, I have had no clue as to where it might come from or the background? I guess its time to go on line and check out the Los Angeles Directories. DB

Mystery bottle

OK, it's most likely NOT a Bitters, but does anyone have any information about what this bottle might have contained? The embossed scene on the bottle is reminiscent of the Hostetter's label, showing St George slaying the dragon. In this case it appears to be a snake. It is trade marked, but not in the CA State Archives book of applications. To the best of my knowledge, they are only dug in the West. I have dug amber examples, here locally, and found a aqua specimen at a show.