Rick- I have attached 3 of my W.S. Wrights but have also added the Misenheimer & Hall Alma Soda with them.
The Misenheimer has the Pacific Glassworks embossed on the base and I have added some information on it. I personally feel that it is a very important bottle in that it was made during the same time frame as the Wrights and there is only 4 known examples, 2 of which are not damaged. This example is dead mint and never cleaned. All four were found in Eureka, Nevada. I am hoping Warren could give some information regarding the possible date(s) of this bottle. The Misenheimer & Hall sodas all appear to be in better glass condition than the Wright's, leading me to believe they came after the Wright's.
Description - Alma is a town located along Los Gatos Creek near the junction with Soda Creek and located in the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains. Today the townsite is under the Lexington Reservoir just east of Highway 17 (880). The Alma Hotel was built in the late 1850's and Misenheimer homesteaded the springs site. The hotel catered to travelers on the stage line between San Jose and Santa Cruz, and at the height of quicksilver mining at New Almaden the Alma Hotel was probably doing brisk business. A rail line was finished in 1876 which most likely diminished the importance of the Alma stop and Hotel. The estimated date of this bottle falls between 1862 and 1865 based on all embossing. Some think it could be a little later.
Mike Southworth
The Misenheimer & Hall soda bottles with base embossed Pacific Glass Works are later than the W.S. Wright bottles, because the letters A in the words Pacific and Glass have the cross bar. The earliest bottles with the words Pacific Glass Works embossed on them have the letter A without a crossbar.
ReplyDeleteI thought we had established a time line for the Alma Soda bottles in an earlier discussion on one of the western blog sites.
Great pickup and addition to your collection Mike. If I remember correctly, I think "Old Cutters" - Mike Dolcini offered up some information about Misenheimer in an old post. Apparently, the 'Springs' were found to be located outside of Misenheimer' property line. Would have been good information to know....BEFORE WE HAD THE DAMN BOTTLES BLOWN.
ReplyDeleteWith no real use for the bottles, they may have.. possibly... made their way to a bottle recycler and showed up in a booming mining district in central Nevada. Two breweries in Eureka, Bemenkampf & Regli and H. Mau were having a hard time keeping in empty bottles to fill for the thirsty miners.
So the Misenheimer bottles may have been blown in the 1860's. Not sure if the early 1860's or the late 1860's, or even early 1870's, but they weren't used at the Alma Springs or even in California, but used a few years later (1876-1882) in Eureka, Nevada. Conjecture at it's finest.
It is funny how some of the soda's ( and others) were blown for one concern, and for one reason or another were used somewhere else. The "Pioneer Brown" sodas are commonly found in Portland... the A. Mans is usually found in Nevada, and not Hollister. Of course the California Club House and other great whiskeys being refilled with beer and shipped to Nevada is legendary. Too bad G.A. Simon's were not shipped somewhere and reused! Hmmm maybe someday it will be discovered they were!
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