cowgirls
[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.
Western 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.
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 town of Cascade, Montana, to help tend a sick friend. She stayed on and became a beloved local legend. Mary was six feet tall, smoked handmade cigars, drank lots of whiskey, packed a revolver under her skirt, and was also handy with a rifle. She started a restaurant that went bust after serving too many free meals and had a contract with the U.S. Post Office. Mary used a stagecoach to deliver mail over a 34-mile loop, and when she ran into snow too deep for her horses, she put on snowshoes and carried the sacks on her shoulders. She was fierce and fearless, fought off bandits and packs of wolves, and never missed a day of mail delivery. Mary also loved children, and they—and their parents—loved Mary back. The Cascade public schools closed every year for her birthday. Stagecoach Mary died in 1914 and is buried in the local cemetery. She’s been inducted into the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame in Ft. Worth, Texas.
Portraits of fictional Anglo cowgirls are depicted on Plains-Maid Beverages, a 7-½ ounce bottle put up by the South Plains Bottling Company of Lubbock, Texas, in 1948 [Fig. 3] and Western
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.
An early and super rare ACL soda bottle depicting a Lulu-like cowgirl wearing a Western hat, chaps, gun belt, and high heels and doing rope tricks is Sody-Licious, a 7-ounce bottle manufactured by the Sody-Licious Beverage Company of Ellensburg, Washington The bottle is known with an orange ACL (1937) as well as with yellow (1938) and red ones (1939) [Fig. 5]. It is also reported to exist with a blue ACL and a white one, although the author was unable to track down photos of those versions. Ellensburg was founded in 1872 and is east of the Cascade Range, with a population of 4,620 people in 1930. Since the early 1920s, Ellensburg has hosted one of the largest rodeos in the
[Fig. 3] Plains-Maid Beverages from Lubbock, Texas, 1948.
[Fig. 4] Western Beverages from Tucumcari, New Mexico, 1953.
Plains-Maid crown cap, 1948, which is even harder to find than the rare bottle.
“Stagecoach Mary,” a remarkable lady born into slavery who moved to frontier Montana after the Civil War. When Montana barred women from entering saloons, the Mayor of Cascade issued an exemption for the hard-drinking Mary Fields.
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.
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
[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
Lemon Lime crown cap depicting a covered wagon. The color of caps often matched the flavor of the soda.
[Background] Hispanic cowgirl wearing a plaid western shirt with desert mountain range vista. Vintage Americana painting made with generative Ai.
[Fig. 6] Pioneer, Salt Lake City, Utah, 1941.
[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] 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.
[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.
BIBLIOGR APHY: 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.
