Our Past Is Present May 18, 2018

May 18, 2018

            You are reading “Our Past Is Present” from the Geary County Historical Society.

            “What caused cripples to lay aside their crutches, invalids to become strong and stout and lean men to grow fat and sassy?” These were questions asked in 1861 and discovered in an article published in a 1992 book titled Kansas Breweries and Beer by Cindy Higgins.

            The answer given to those questions were “Junction City Lager Beer according to its advertisements made by Robert Wilson and Jonathan Westover.  The two men spent $1,850 on 700 bushels of malt; $100 on 300 bushels of hops and $60 on wood.  Powered by a one-horse power engine and three brewery hands each earning $30 a month, the Junction City Brewery produced 400 barrels of beer a year valued at $4,800.

            Junction City Lager Beer wasn’t the first beer brewed in the city.  C.K. Heboldsheimer from Bavaria, came to Junction City by way of Kalamazoo, Michigan to start a brewery.  He opened his business in 1858 and made beer for only two years before moving to LeCompton and then to Topeka.

            Wilson and Westover’s establishment really had a hold on the Junction City beer market when they teamed up with a brewery from Poland who opened a distillery in conjunction with the brewery.  Good plan – bad results. 

            The federal government did more than frown on the combined liquor plant.  It ordered one or the other terminated.  The distillery went. 

            Junction City may have not been the best place to market beer.  Anheuser-Busch shipped in 13 train carloads of beer a trip to at least one Junction City distributor and temperance activists forced 21 saloons to close in 1875. 

            Yet one more brewer, Helmon Cammert entered the scene and disregarded the temperate climate when he bought the Old Smoky Hill Brewery.  Cammert advertised his purchase announcing: “The old Smoky Hill Brewery is reopened and in operation again under a new management.  Its beer is the best offered to the trade.  TRY IT!”

            Well… that’s today’s story on “Our Past Is Present” from the Geary County Historical Society.