Soft drink bottling in El Paso began on April 1, 1881 with the opening of Houck & Dieter, although Coffin & Co. advertised soda bottling "kits" in 1881 and may have sold them much earlier.  The firm was not, however, a bottler, as such. Although Houck & Dieter's primary occupation was the wholesale distribution of liquor and wine, the firm realized the need for chasers and incidentally provided non-alcoholic drinks for the desert population.  Although G. Edwin Angerstein briefly challenged their supremacy in 1883, the liquor dealers controlled the soft drink industry in the city until shortly before 1910.  At that time, they were met by three noteworthy opponents:  Martin R. Sweeney (later to organize Woodlawn Bottling Company) in 1905; Purity Bottling and Manufacturing Company (owned and operated by Lawrence Gardner) in 1906; and Magnolia Bottling Company (founded by Hope Smith) in 1908.  Although Gardner claimed singlehanded victory over the liquor establishment, the other two were obviously generating impressive sales as well.  When Purity merged with Houck & Dieter to form Empire Bottling Works in 1912, the heyday of the liquor dealer as a power in the El Paso bottling industry was over. 

     From 1905 until the mid-1930s, the small bottlers took over.  Grocers and family-run small units began bottling all over downtown El Paso, often under their personal names.  Some of these, like Antonio Patino (1922) lasted a year or less before returning to a concentration on groceries or leaving town.  Others adapted with a name change.  Francisco Dominguez & Company (1915) became Union Bottling Works (1916-1935), and M. R. Sweeney renamed his business Woodlawn Bottling Company in 1908.  A company name, however, did not automatically bring success.  Crystal Bottling Works (1911 and 1915) and International Bottling Works (1917), only lasted a year or less.  Other bottlers, such as Texas Bottling Works, Lone Star Bottling Works, and Victory Bottling Works lasted a decade or more.  Few bottlers who sold strictly local brands remained in business for long.  Notable exceptions were Woodlawn Bottling Company (1905-1997), Empire Bottling Works (1912-1969), and Nicholson Bottling Works (1925-1979).  During World War I, El Paso, like the rest of the U. S. suffered sugar rationing, but most of the small bottlers survived. 

     Prohibition (begun in Texas in 1919) had brought the final end to the liquor establishment in El Paso and ushered in a new era of prosperity for soft drink bottlers.  A rash of new bottlers (many of them short lived) arrived to take advantage of a thirsty population with no competition from beer and liquor dealers.  It was the era of near-beer, low- or non-alcoholic beverages that tasted and looked like beer.  Led by Anheuser Busch, brewers of Bevo, a non-alcoholic cereal beverage formulated to serve US troops that had recently received orders in 1916 prohibiting alcoholic beverages, brewers soon aimed these near-beers at the military trade.  The threat of Prohibition (national in 1920) also spurred brewers to alter their formulas as a means of survival.  Former beer labels remained basically the same but no longer contained the word "beer."  Most of these near-beers were bottled in amber containers with paper labels that had the same appearance as the earlier beer bottles.  To the El Paso Brewing Association, near-beer provided a way to remain in business.  The brewers formed a subsidiary, Tri-State Beverage Company (1919-1923), that bottled Bock and Bravo (near-beers), along with Triangle flavors.  Woodlawn attempted a near-beer called Barlo but soon changed to the nationally popular Blatz, while Nicholson Bottling Works distributed three brands:  Goldcrest, Golden Glow, and NIB (Non-Intoxicating Beverage).  The highly successful Empire Bottling Works brought in Schlitz, and a new firm, Border Beverage Company (1920-1922), offered Graino and Bone Dry.  Even companies who formerly eschewed beverage sales entered into the competition.  Mackin Brokerage Company (1931-1932) distributed Falstaff Pale, Dublin-Style Cereal Beverage, and Pale Dry Ginger Ale, while Crombie and Company became dispensers of Pearl.  Unfortunately, for the near-beer manufacturers, the public wanted more than just the beer taste.  Alcohol sales in nearby Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, skyrocketed, and near-beer sales steadily declined until the repeal of Prohibition. 

     Although the Great Depression failed to create a major impact on El Paso until late in 1931, it afterward struck so hard that most of the small companies like Union Bottling Works, Texas Bottling Works, Lone Star Bottling & Fuel Company, and Victory Bottling Works failed to survive.  Everyone's sales declined.  Magnolia Coca-Cola Company, boasting the best soft drink sales in El Paso, were hit most lightly but still decreased in volume by 31.7%.  Others were hit harder with Woodlawn Bottling Company's sales plummeting by 62.7%!  Woodlawn only survived by cutting employees to an absolute minimum, cutting hours, and bottling everything it could sell (including table syrup and bleach).  The depression sounded the death knell for most of the smaller, independent bottlers. 

     At the same time, the 1930s saw the rise of nationally franchised companies in El Paso.  The Nehi Bottling Company arrived in 1931, followed by Seven Up Bottling Co. of El Paso in 1937 and Barq's Bottling Company in 1939.  Woodlawn Bottling Company acquired the Pepsi-Cola franchise in 1935.  This was the era of the bottling boom; El Paso boasted as many as fourteen different bottlers in business at one time during this period.  Some of the older, private companies still survived, and newcomers like T. R. Fye Products Company, Wonder Beverage Company, and Lone Star Sparkling Beverages (no relation to the earlier Lone Star Bottling Works) rose and fell. 
 The United States government again instituted sugar rationing during World War II.  By this time, the franchisers were all selling sodas to the military and so were allotted extra sugar.  Glass, too, was scarce, but bottlers serving military posts were allowed an extra supply.  Bottlers in areas with no nearby military installations received no new bottles until the end of rationing in 1947 (Personal communication from Michael M. Elling, February 20, 1997). 

     Slowly, between the 1950s and 1970s, the family-owned franchise began to disappear.  One important factor in the demise of the family-owned bottler was the increase in popularity of cans in the 1970s.  Adapting to non-returnable bottles had proved to be a hardship to most local bottlers; the additional requirements necessary for canning proved fatal.  Many, like Richard Price of Grapette and Empire, sold out.  A few like the Condon family of Pepsi-Cola, ceased bottling altogether, preferring to buy already packaged products from larger bottlers.  Others went out of business.  The era of the small bottler in El Paso was at an end. 

     Big business came to town in the 1970s, following the national trend.  Just as the nationwide companies began consolidating during the period, so did the local companies.  In 1970, the Seven Up Bottling Company of El Paso acquired the local Royal Crown franchise and followed up in 1974 by purchasing the Canada Dry franchise.  Local owners were displaced by the Kalil Bottling Company of Tucson, Arizona, in 1986.  Kalil had entered El Paso two years earlier, when it bought many of the small franchises that Magnolia Coca-Cola had acquired through the purchase of the Dr Pepper Bottling Company in 1980.  By the mid-1980s, only three companies were left.  Magnolia Coca-Cola Company was now big business; Hope Smith's heirs had sold it to a Dallas firm in 1977, and it had changed hands three more times by 1995.  The newcomer, Kalil, had taken over most of the small businesses and consolidated them into one large enterprise based in Tucson.  The final bottler, Pepsi-Cola Bottling Company (the old Woodlawn), was the last remaining family-run soft drink distributor.  Continuously in business since 1905, the Condon family, descendents of founder, Martin R. Sweeney, continued to run the business until 1997.  Of the three giants, only Coca-Cola still bottles (and cans) its own products in El Paso.  Kalil ships in drinks from its main Tucson plant, and Pepsi buys from still larger Pepsi franchises. 

     Another strange trend centered around the family-owned bottlers.  Hope Smith, Allie Randle, and Lawrence Gardner all died of heart attacks or strokes and left their wives to officiate the remaining operations.  The pattern lasted for two generations at Woodlawn.  Sweeney, the founder, left his wife, Margaret, to run the business, and Marshall Condon (Sweeney's nephew) left the Pepsi-Cola Company in the charge of Julia Condon and five of her daughters.  The process almost repeated generationally in the Yowell family of Barq's and Dr Pepper.  John Yowell had died of a heart attack, leaving his wife, Marion, and son, Joe ("Dub") to run the business.  After a heart attack in 1970, Dub could see he was following in his father's footsteps, so he sold the business to Coca-Cola and retired.  Consistently, the remaining wives proved to be able businesswomen and successfully operated their respective companies for varying periods of time.  Margaret Sweeney, for example, was responsible for the instigation of the Peps-Cola franchise by Woodlawn in 1935, a move that probably saved the company from dissolving during the Depression. 

     One final business trend needs to be addressed--that of change in location.  The early bottlers (Houck & Dieter, G. Edwin Angerstein, R. F. Johnson, etc.) operated in downtown El Paso, frequently close to the railroad (see maps in Appendix E).  Prior to 1900, however, El Paso did not extend far beyond what is currently the downtown area.  Still, the downtown area was a primary choice of location until around the 1940s.  By the early 1930s, however, bottlers such as Nehi and Lone Star had started a trend toward eastward migration.  By the 1940s, fully half the bottlers had moved their plants east, and only Woodlawn remained in the original downtown area close to the Rio Grande.  The following decade gave evidence of a move farther east.  Even Woodlawn (now renamed Pepsi-Cola Bottling Company of El Paso) had moved east by the early 1960s.  Only Barq's and Empire remained in the downtown area of the 1920s, and no one was left in the original city center.  The 1970s showed a continuation of the trend, and the only three bottlers still in business in the early 1980s had moved still farther east (with Pepsi still holding out at Reynolds Avenue).  By 1996, even Pepsi had moved into suburbia. 

     Although El Paso had expanded west as well as east, not a single bottler had chosen to operate in the western side of town.  The greatest increase in population continually occurred in east El Paso, and it is no surprise that the bottlers followed the trend.  Overcrowding and escalating real estate costs drove many bottlers to seek a more suburban location.  Barq's was practically pushed out of its downtown location by increasing traffic and parking problems.  The cost of land hampered expansion in the downtown area, and most of the nationally franchised operators had outgrown their earlier operations by the 1940s necessitating the eastward movement. 

      A related set of trends paralleled that of business--types of beverages.  During the liquor dealer era (ca. 1881-1912), locally concocted ginger ales, ginger champagnes, champagne cider, and other chasers/mixers were popular, along with such nationally available mineral waters as Manitou Mineral Water, Cylsmic "King of Table Waters," Apollinaris Company Mineral Waters, Stafford Springs Mineral Waters, Buffalo Lithia Water, and Nassau Selter.  The trend changed to primarily local brands with the opening of local bottlers around 1907.  Purity, Empire, Lone Star, Union, and most other bottling works of the time offered a variety of soft drink flavors under a brand name that matched their company designation.  A few offered more diversity.  Woodlawn vended both Woodlawn and Toltec brands; Magnolia bottled Hope's flavors.  A few branched into national franchises during the period (Magnolia introduced Coca-Cola in 1911; Nicholson offered Howdy Orange in the 1920s), but most continued to sell local products.  Local brands remained on the forefront until the 1930s, when national franchise brands gained prominence and all but eliminated their local competitors. 

     Although some national brands were distributed prior to the 1930s, only Coca-Cola had caught on and only with some difficulty.  El Pasoans had never heard of Coca-Cola (never called Coke in the early days)  when Hope Smith captured the franchise in 1911 and were not interested.  The only way Smith could sell the new drink was to insert a few bottles of Coca-Cola into cases of Hope's flavors.  Eventually the cola taste caught on.  Although a few local brands remained popular (Empire until 1969, Nicholson until 1979), the national products had come to stay.  Most of today's giants (Pepsi-Cola, Royal Crown, Dr Pepper, and Seven-Up) got their El Paso start in the 1930s.  Many smaller franchises, such as Barq's, Double Cola, Bubble Up, and Grapette arrived, flourished, and lost popularity by the 1970s.  The loss of prominence by some brands does not mean that soft drinks, themselves had lost popularity.  By the early 1970s, soft drinks had captured the number two spot for per capita consumption in the U. S. away from milk.  Coffee remained the only more popular beverage (Woodruff & Phillips 1974:10).  Many "custom" brands, such as Safeway's Cragmont sodas, were bottled locally by firms like Wes-Tex Custom Bottlers, Inc., who bottled special orders from 1973 to 1978. 

El Paso Bottlers Association 
     With as many as fourteen bottlers in contiguous operation, competition was fierce, and conflict was inevitable.  Nasty tricks, such as slightly prying the crown caps to let out the carbon dioxide gas or putting dirt in another truck's gas tank were not unheard of.  During the late 1950s, however, affable owner/managers, like Richard Price and Joe "Dub" Yowell, began to get friendly with each other and cooperate in settling common problems like dealing with price changes.  The wholesale price of soft drinks had remained at 85¢ per case for years, but costs for bottles, crown closures, sugar, and other production necessities had steadily risen.  As an anonymous informant put it, "We had to raise prices of go out of business. . . . We had to get to know each other."  Federal regulations prohibited price fixing, but for an individual bottler in the tight market of the 1950s to raise his prices while his competitors retained theirs at a lower level would have been financial suicide;  cooperation of some sort was necessary for survival. 

     The solution was the formation of the El Paso Bottlers Association, a loosely-knit organization of franchise owners who met on an irregular basis (although generally once a month) to discuss problems of the trade that were unique to El Paso--including increases in prices and deposits.  The association had to be careful to avoid charges of collusion, so few notes were kept, and all agreements were sealed with a hand-shake.  Although the owners could not simultaneously raise their prices, they could agree that a raise was necessary and set a general time-frame for the increase.  It was an uncomfortable solution but a pragmatic one. 

     Since corporate survival was the name of the game, almost everyone was willing to join in the play--with one notable exception.  Hope Smith of Magnolia Coca-Cola flatly refused to cooperate.  Coke was #1, and Smith knew it.  His position was secure regardless of the problems and necessities that faced his competitors.  For the duration of his life, he declined all invitations to participate in the association.  Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, competition waned.  Smaller and older companies went out of business; the survivors frequently bought out competitors.  Gradually the need for the bottlers association diminished, and the meetings faded into obscurity.