The Ginger Champagne Era, 1875–1915

One-time owner of the Moon Tide Spring and “agent” for the Mount Zircon Spring Company, Francis P. Putnam is shown in this circa 1890 photograph alongside his sister, Drusilla Putnam Abbott Jackson, and his wife, Eunice Putnam.

The Mount Zircon Spring Company, later the Mount Zircon Spring Water Company, maintained a main office in Boston from the 1890s until the 1920s.

The Mount Zircon spring house, a small, hip-roofed building that once sported a crescent moon-shaped weathervane, was constructed over the Moon Tide Spring in 1890. The building remains standing today.

The first bottling house on Mount Zircon was erected during the summer of 1896. Sited opposite the spring house on the road over “Zircon Hill,” the modest structure contained rooms on the first floor where the head bottler, Jason Hall, and his family lived.

The now-famous Mount Zircon Moon Tide Spring trademark, showing a full moon rising over a cascading stream of water, probably dates from 1897, when the company began packaging spring water in glass bottles with paper labels. Over the years, at least five different versions of this logo were used on bottles, bottle caps, shipping boxes, and wrapping tape. The rendering of this 1920s label also appeared on the front of several two-story bottle-shaped Mount Zircon lunch stands.

Flavored and carbonated beverages made with water from the Moon Tide Spring began to appear in the late 1890s. The famous Mount Zircon Ginger Champagne had become the Company’s most popular drink by the 1920s.

Built by Arthur Sloan in 1904, the second hotel on Mount Zircon was operated for many years by his brother and sister-in-law, Joseph and Frances Sloan. The main summit of Mount Zircon appears on the right of this circa 1925 photograph. The building was abandoned by the 1930s.

Taken in January of 1914, this is one of the few interior photographs of the first Mount Zircon bottling house known to exist. To prevent contamination during the bottling process, workers were required to wear caps and long smocks, and no smoking was allowed. Dressed in such an outfit, Herbert Hall appears in the center of the photo alongside a number of quart bottles and carboys of Mount Zircon water. Charles Judkins, Company president and treasurer, is in the left foreground. Because the first floor of the bottling house was utilized as a residence, most of the heavy machinery used in the bottling process was confined to this large basement room.

The attic story of the first Mount Zircon bottling house was where capping operations took place and where wooden crates were assembled. A close examination of this photograph taken in January 1914 reveals bottles containing Ginger Champagne (on the wheeled cart and makeshift table at left center), Sparkling Water (on the long shelf at the left rear), and Natural Water (being capped by Herbert Hall). The self-balanced freight elevator at left operated on a continuous cable that fed through pulleys in the attic ceiling and allowed wooden flats (small, low-sided boxes) containing filled bottles to be raised from the basement with relative ease. Charles Judkins, Company head from 1911 to 1919, stands in the background next to wooden crates containing fifty bottles each of Mount Zircon Spring Water.