ACL#15_Cowgirls

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March – April 2025

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ACL #15

Cowgirls!

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The official publication of the Federation of Historical Bottle Collectors

Vol. 36

No. 2

ACL CORNER #15 [Mike Dickman]

cowgirls

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ikipedia defines “cowgirl” as “the female equivalent of a cowboy” but that seems too narrow. The National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame in Fort Worth, Texas honors hundreds of “cowgirls” who had nothing to do with herding cattle.

Instead, they are women from all walks of life who exhibited the courage, resilience, independence and pioneer spirit which shaped the American West. The Western bottlers of applied colored label (ACL) sodas loved cowboys and cowgirls, so let’s look at a few of their fictional cowgirls as well as some real-life ones.

[Figs. 1 & 2, Left & Below] Western Maid from Tulsa, Oklahoma, 1949.

The reverse sides of the two varieties of Western Maid, showing the slight differences in design. Both varieties are equally rare. Photo courtesy of Ryan Berlin, from his collection.

[Background] Blonde cowgirl wearing red western shirt with desert mountain range vista vintage Americana painting made with generative Ai.

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Antique Bottle & Glass Collector

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estern Maid is a ten-ounce, red-white-andblue ACL soda put up in 1949 by the Western Beverage Company of Tulsa, Oklahoma. It depicts a perky-looking cowgirl wearing a bandanna with fleecy clouds and cacti on either side of her framed portrait.

The bottle is scarce and desirable, and I’ve been able to document less than a dozen sales during the past twenty-five years with two slightly different ACLs. [Figs. 1 & 2] Tulsa is situated along the Arkansas River in northeast Oklahoma and was a sleepy little town of just 1,390 people in 1900, the year before oil was discovered. The discovery changed everything.

Tulsa boomed into “The Oil Capital of the World” and boasted a population of 180,000+ people in the 1950 United States Census, when Western Maid was bottled. With such a large consumer base, it’s strange that so few of the bottles still exist.

Beverages, a 7-ounce bottle from the D. P. Bottling Company of Tucumcari, New Mexico, made in 1953 [Fig. 4]. Both bottles are rare, although the more common Western Beverages from Glendive, Montana, used the identical ACL as the Tucumcari bottle but can be purchased for $50 or less. Both of the cowgirls wear Western hats and bandannas, and the front labels include Western themes such as ropes and, in the case of Plains-Maid, boots, spurs and horse bits.

All of those implements (cowboy hats, bandannas, ropes, boots, spurs and bits) were used by many real-life cowgirls. One was Lulu Bell Parr (18761955), who was orphaned at age three and then learned to shoot and ride horses from an uncle who raised her. Lulu became a world-renowned sharpshooter and trick rider in Pawnee Bill’s Wild West Show and excelled in the dangerous sport of bronc riding and, even more dangerous, buffalo riding. She dressed in beautiful, flamboyant outfits that she sewed herself and performed her skills before King Edward VII of England in 1903. Sadly, however, Lulu died penniless in 1955 in a bleak little house without running water or electricity but stuffed full of prizes, souvenirs, and mementos, including an ivory-handled Colt revolver presented to her

by Buffalo Bill Cody. Lulu is also enshrined in the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame.

No bottler ever featured Mary Fields, but perhaps they should have.

“Stagecoach Mary” was a real cowgirl with a fascinating life. An African-American woman who was born into slavery in Tennessee, Mary went West after the Emancipation and ended up in the tiny “Stagecoach Mary,” a remarkable lady born town of Cascade, into slavery who moved to frontier Montana Montana, to help An early and super rare after the Civil War. When Montana barred womtend a sick friend.

ACL soda bottle depicten from entering saloons, the Mayor of Cascade ing a Lulu-like cowgirl issued an exemption for the hard-drinking Mary She stayed on and [Fig. 3] Plains-Maid Beverages became a beloved lowearing a Western hat, Fields. from Lubbock, Texas, 1948. cal legend. Mary was chaps, gun belt, and high six feet tall, smoked handmade cigars, drank lots of heels and doing rope whiskey, packed a revolver under her skirt, and was also handy tricks is Sody-Licious, a 7-ounce bottle with a rifle. She started a restaurant that went bust after serving manufactured by the Sody-Licious too many free meals and had a contract with the U.S. Post OfBeverage Company of Ellensburg, fice. Mary used a stagecoach to deliver mail over a 34-mile loop, Washington. The bottle is known with and when she ran into snow too deep for her horses, she put on an orange ACL (1937) as well as with snowshoes and carried the sacks on her shoulders. She was fierce yellow (1938) and red ones (1939) [Fig. and fearless, fought off bandits and packs of wolves, and 5]. It is also reported to exist with never missed a day of mail delivery. Mary also loved a blue ACL and a white one, children, and they—and their parents—loved Mary although the author was back. The Cascade public schools closed every unable to track down year for her birthday. Stagecoach Mary died in photos of those ver1914 and is buried in the local cemetery. She’s sions. Ellensburg was been inducted into the National Cowgirl Musefounded in 1872 and um and Hall of Fame in Ft. Worth, Texas. is east of the Cascade Range, with a popuPortraits of fictional Anglo cowgirls are depicted lation of 4,620 people in on Plains-Maid Beverages, a 7-½ ounce bottle 1930. Since the early 1920s, put up by the South Plains Bottling Company Ellensburg has hosted one Plains-Maid crown cap, 1948, which of Lubbock, Texas, in 1948 [Fig. 3] and Western of the largest rodeos in the is even harder to find than the rare March – April 2025

bottle.

[Fig. 4] Western Beverages from Tucumcari, New Mexico, 1953.

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Western states; hence, the cowgirl with her lasso. The city’s small size and isolated location may explain the rarity of these charming little bottles, and it is a mystery why the bottler went to the expense of changing the ACL colors every year.

Not all cowgirls were good girls. A very bad one was Belle Starr (1848-1889), known in her time as the “Bandit Queen” and definitely not honored in the Cowgirl Hall of Fame. Belle was born in Carthage, Missouri, where her brother fought for the vicious, pro-Confederacy guerrillas known as “bushwhackers” who ambushed Union soldiers until he was killed by Union troops. Belle was reputed to be a Confederate spy. After the Civil War, her family moved to Texas where they became associated with outlaws such as Jesse and Frank James, and Cole Younger. Belle married an outlaw named James Reed, who was wanted in Arkansas for murder, and the couple lived a life of crime robbing stagecoaches, stealing horses, rustling cattle, and bootlegging whiskey. Reed eventually was murdered, and Belle then married another outlaw named Sam Starr. Belle was a crack shot who carried two pistols and a cartridge belt, and she is said to have planned and organized the crimes carried out by Starr and his gang. In 1882, the couple was captured, tried, and convicted of horse thievery, and Belle served nine months in prison. Sam Starr was later killed in a gunfight, and Belle married another outlaw, continuing her life of crime. On February 3, 1889, however, two days before her 41st birthday, Belle was ambushed and shot in the back while riding home on her horse. Nobody was ever held to account for the cold-blooded murder of the Bandit Queen, and the crime remains unsolved to this day.

Lemon Lime crown cap depicting a covered wagon. The color of caps often matched the flavor of the soda.

[Fig. 5] Sody-Licious Bottled Beverages from Ellensburg, Washington, 1937-39. It’s unusual for a bottler to have produced the same ACL in different colors. Photo courtesy of Ryan Berlin.

I don’t know if the tens of thousands of pioneer women who came West would technically be considered cowgirls, but they sure embody the spirit of independence, bravery, grit and determination. One of these unnamed heroines, alongside her child, is depicted on Pioneer, a 12-ounce red-and-white ACL soda bottle put up in 1941 by the Dr. Pepper Bottling Company of Salt Lake City, Utah. [Fig. 6] The artwork is crude but heartfelt, and the bottle is scarce but obtainable—one of several ACL sodas from western states that depict covered wagons. This particular Pioneer ACL undoubtedly harkens back to the Mormon migration from the Midwest to the Salt Lake Valley of the Great Basin in what is now Utah but was a remote territory of Mexico then. From the mid-1840s through the late 1860s, more than 70,000 Latter-day Saints made the long, arduous, and dangerous journey in covered wagons pulled by oxen or sometimes by walking the 1,300 miles while pulling wooden carts behind them. Nine babies were born inside the wagons on a frigid night during the harsh winter of 1846. It is hard to imagine the strength, bravery, and fortitude of the moms who crossed the plains in order to give themselves, their families, and their descendants (including future cowgirls) a better life and the freedom to practice their religion.

Whether you enjoy cowgirls or trains, mountains or birds, or almost anything else in the world, there are ACL soda bottles out there to pique your interest!

The author welcomes comments, questions and suggestions at mikedickman@yahoo.com 14

Antique Bottle & Glass Collector

[Background] Hispanic cowgirl wearing a plaid western shirt with desert mountain range vista. Vintage Americana painting made with generative Ai.

[Left] Poster from Pawnee Bill’s Historic Wild West Show, 1880s, which included Lulu Bell Parr as one of the “Beautiful Daring Western Girls.”

[Below] The Golden Driller, a 75-foot-tall statute that stands outside the Tulsa Expo Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, home of Western Maid soda. The Expo hosts an annual bottle show known for ACL soda bottles.

[Above] “Mormon Pioneers Crossing the Mississippi on the Ice” painting by C.C.A. Christensen (1831-1912). Courtesy of Brigham Young University Museum of Art. [Left] Lulu Bell Parr, an extraordinary sharpshooter and trick rider who made her own clothing and accessories.

[Below] Belle Starr, the Bandit Queen in Ft. Smith, Arkansas, 1886. Belle was murdered a few years after the photo was taken.

[Fig. 6] Pioneer, Salt Lake City, Utah, 1941.

March – April 2025

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Sweeney, Rick, Collecting Applied Color Label Soda Bottles (3d ed. 2002, PSBCA).

VintageSodaCollector.com by FOHBC member Tom Petitt, a great resource containing hundreds of color photographs as well as interesting, useful articles about all things ACL. Weide’s Soda Page (ca-yd.com), by FOHBC members Chris and Catherine Weide, is another outstanding, useful resource for ACL bottles.

Wikipedia entries for Cowgirl, Belle Starr, Lulu Bell Parr, Mary Fields and the Mormon Migration.

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