Albert Lea’s prime source of beverages
Published 12:00 am Sunday, January 12, 2003
(Second of two parts)
During its five-plus decades of mixing, bottling and selling soft drinks, the Albert Lea Bottling Works created several brands and many flavors for its beverages. In fact, this firm featured and promoted for a few years one of the oddest ingredients to ever be added to soda.
This firm, once located at 147 W. College St., was purchased by a local merchant named Adam Wiegand in 1904. After Adam’s death in 1907, his wife Katherine and three sons, Robert, William and Carlyle, took over operations of the firm.
Legal documents recently donated by Marie Bailey of Morton to the Freeborn County Historical Museum Library consist of two copyrights and a trademark issued to the firm by the U.S. Patent Office in Washington, D.C.
The trademark was issued in 1924 for Dr.
Stearns’ Root Beer. One copyright was issued in 1926 to K. Wiegand and Sons for the label to be used on Minnesota Dry Ginger Ale bottles. The second copyright was issued in 1932 for the label to be used on bottles of Ace High Lithiated Lemon Soda.
And just what is lithiated soda? It’s lithium oxide, or a mineral water characterized by the presence of lithium salts. Evidently this particular concoction, likely intended as a remedy for hangovers, didn’t work out as planned. Within a few years the Ace High label was changed and the drink formula reportedly resembled 7-Up.
The Wiegand firm was then the only local supplier of flavored soda pop to solve thirst problems in the area. Spring stopper bottles were used, filled one at a time, and capped With use of a foot lever.
For all of its years of operation, the Albert Lea Bottling used bottles which had to be returned to the plant, cleaned, refilled and sent out to customers. Some of the bottles were embossed and dedicated to one particular brand for every return to the plant. Those with paper labels could be switched from one brand or flavor to another depending on need or the day’s beverage being produced.
A continuing problem for this type of operation was glass breakage and lost or misplaced bottles.
Some of the flavors sold by this firm during the early years included orange, grape, cider, strawberry, ginger ale, Dr. Stearns’ Root Beer and lemon sour. Carbonated water was also bottled and sold.
The Wiegands expanded their firm in 1914 with the move to a new two-story brick building at 515 W. William St. In time, the production became more automated and crown caps replaced the older spring stoppers.
In time, the firm developed several brand names and more drink flavors.
The newer flavors were grapefruit, lemon beer, hula punch and a somewhat different and newer root beer concoction sold under a different brand than that of Dr. Stearns’. And many of these flavors were sold in the stores and out of coin-operated vending machines under the Col. Albert Lea label.
What may have been the most unusual brand from this firm was the McAllen brand. Maybe this was based on what was even then the Texas town in the Rio Grande Valley which was a wintertime destination for some area residents.
After World War II the products of the Albert Lea Bottling Works were being sold in Freeborn, Faribault and Waseca counties, plus Mitchell, Worth, Winnebago, and Hancock Counties in Iowa. Besides the three Wiegand brothers and their mother, the firm had three other employees and operated a delivery fleet of three trucks.
In June 1957, the firm was sold to F.M. Sprenger of Conger. He may have had intentions to continue, but by 1961 the firm had ceased operations.
Several factors contributed to the decline and demise of this pioneer bottling firm. One was the expansion of both national and regional bottling firms and their more extensively advertised brands. Another was the conversion to canned soda pop. Also, this was the era when the large brewers and bottling firms became even larger, and the smaller firms went out of business.
The former bottling plant on West William Street became a part of the Albert Lea school system and was used as part of the vocational school for several years. This location is now the site of Arrow Printing Company.
William Wiegand died in August 1957, Katherine Wiegand died at the age of 100 in May 1963, Robert Wiegand died in October 1968, and Carlyle Wiegand died in November 1978.
Now all that’s left as a reminder of the era when Albert Lea had its own producer of soda pop are a brick building near the West Main Street bridge and a few antique bottles.