Erika Janik:
Open a bottle from the old castle soda company in Whitefish Bay and discover the story of resorts and urbanization in early 20th century Wisconsin. Kelsey Corrigan has the story as part of our ongoing series, Wisconsin 101 a statewide collaborative project to explore Wisconsin’s story through historical objects.

Kelsey Corrigan:
This object is a soda bottle made from the C Cassel Soda Company from Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin in the early 1900s and this soda bottle contained carbonated water, mostly, and was sold to people in Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin. The Castle soda bottle company started in 1897 and they just made carbonated water, which was called soda water back then. And they were in Whitefish Bay. It was a very local business, and they really didn’t sell any soda outside of Whitefish Bay. Whitefish Bay, at the time, hadn’t really developed yet. It was mostly farms, not a lot of houses, really. But there’s a big resort there. It was called the Whitefish Bay Pabst Resort. It attracted a ton of people every weekend from all over Wisconsin and from Northern Illinois. It even attracted famous people, I believe President Theodore Roosevelt went there at one point. It was very highly regarded in Wisconsin. So Pabst actually started the resort. He built it in the purpose to sell more Pabst products, and so they only sold alcoholic beverages, because that’s what Pabst made, and that’s where the Cassel Soda Company came in, is they provided the non-alcoholic beverages. So the soda company really relied on the Whitefish Bay Pabst Resort, and that’s how it was able to stay in business for about 20 years.

I am originally from Whitefish Bay, and so when I started to research objects for this project, I kind of looking for an object that was from my hometown, because that interests me, and it was a way for me to learn more about where I grew up. But what I thought was really cool about the soda company is that there was a diary entry that I read about a young girl who actually wrote that the Cassel Soda Company, if you found their empty soda bottles throughout Whitefish Bay or throughout the resort, and you returned it to the Cassel Company, you got a free soda. So I thought that was just the coolest story, and I researched more into it, and it turns out that glass soda bottles were very expensive at the time, so bottle reuse was becoming more common in the early 1900s because the expense of importing soda bottles and embossing company names on soda bottles. So I thought castle made a very unique and innovative way to kind of keep its bottles, by giving out free soda if you return the bottle, it’s, it’s actually, it’s funny. I remember growing up and I remember seeing, actually, Cassel’s house. It was a huge house that was on the main downtown block in Whitefish Bay. And I definitely remember it’s a huge house, and it’s a shame now the house is torn down, but it was really cool for me to kind of think back and know that this house, at one time, 100 years ago, was making soda and was contributing to Whitefish Bay’s development, which is crazy that I live in Whitefish Bay, and I never knew there was this big resort and this soda company there.

Erika Janik:
That story is part of Wisconsin 101 a collaborative project to explore our history in objects. Wisconsin Life is a co-production of Wisconsin Public Radio and Wisconsin Public Television in partnership with the Wisconsin Humanities Council. Additional support comes from Lowell and Mary Peterson of Appleton. Find more Wisconsin life on our website, wisconsinlife.org and on Facebook. I’m Erika Janik.