A new exhibit at the Allen County Historical Museum celebrates the storied Iola Coca-Cola Bottling Company.
Though the plant operated just north of the Iola square for decades, in the beginning it was anything but smooth sailing.
It all started in 1905 with a fellow by the name of John Copening, who after his first week in town decided Kansas might be a little too rough for his taste.
Not only “was the business district rocked by three dynamite blasts,” the result of Charley Melvin targeting local saloons, but Copening was unjustly arrested and had his team and wagon confiscated.
Two years later, though, he decided to buy the Iola Steam Bottling Company, and his bottling odyssey had officially begun.
The Steam Bottling Company already made 30 different kinds of soda, mixing its own extracts and sometimes even its own carbonic acid gas (via a machine called a spider).
Copening recalled when the spider would vibrate wildly from internal pressure, and one day he witnessed the company boys wildly sprinting from the back room yelling “She’s a’ dancin’! She’s a’ dancin’!”
Thankfully, “the machine never blew up and no one was injured.”
Some of the other flavors of soda along with regular Coke included: iron brew, banana, vanilla, sarsaparilla, blackberry, tango, cherry, strawberry, orange, lemon and various “standard” flavors.
However, with regard to flavoring, Copening pointed out how “the taste and quality of Coca-Cola was so varied in different parts of the county that it was difficult to determine that it was Coca-Cola. Failure of bottling machinery to overcome the variance in water in different sections was largely the reason.”
In other words, product standardization wasn’t yet widespread, and so depending on the water where you lived, your Coca-Cola could taste radically different.
And yes, Coca-Cola syrup did contain actual cocaine up until 1929, though the amount had been continually decreased over the years. Concerns about the health effects of cocaine had indeed been raised, but the inventors were worried about removing it right away because, since the “Coca” in Coca-Cola is a reference to coca leaves, they were worried about losing their trademark.
In 1908, Copening bought the building at 204 North Washington, where the bottling company would reside the remainder of its life.
Around this time, he remembered leaving Iola with wagon loads of Coca-Cola, bringing along camping equipment and supplies for his team of horses.
He’d often have to spend the night in two or three different counties along his route that included, not only Allen, but Woodson, Greenwood, Anderson and Coffey counties.
The company was the first in Iola to buy a truck, but that wasn’t until around 1912 or 1913. (Copening also owned the first boat used on the Neosho River.)
