Coca-Cola Bottling Plant Building - Glen Rose, TX - Signs of History on Waymarking.com

This building is a contributing building to the Glen Rose Downtown Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places, and it is today home to La Vita Italian Restaurant, a pretty good place to dine. The sign is easy to locate. Come through the entrance to the restaurant, look up and to your left above the windows, and you'll see it between two vintage photos. It reads:

In 1928 Grover C. Gibbs, Sr. bought the existing Coca-Cola business along with accumulated indebtedness. To pay off the debts, he and his older sons cut and sold 200 loads of wood in about six months time.

Mr. Gibbs built and moved into the first part of this building in 1932. The original equipment consisted of a foot-powered bottling machine and a Model-T Ford delivery truck. Later in 1946, he expanded the plant and added the brick veneer, the second story serving as a syrup room which used gravity flow to the fillers. In time, he updated the equipment with an automatic processing machine that sealed and capped the Cokes.

Glen Rose long held the distinction of being the smallest city in the world having a Coca-Cola bottling plant, and at one time was hailed as the heaviest consumer of Coke on a per capita basis. Yes, Glen Rose had its name on the bottom of Coke bottles just like the rest of the nation's Cokes!

All nine Gibbs children and several grandchildren worked in the plant, keeping the area's stores and schools supplied with Coca-Cola for over forty years. When it closed in 1974, The familiar sounds of bottles moving, empty or full, and the wooden cases being stacked was indeed missed by the locals.

[Somervell County Historical Commission; Glen Rose-Somervell County Chamber of Commerce]

Group that erected the marker: Somervell County Historical Commission, Glen Rose-Somervell County Chamber of Commerce Address of where the marker is located. Approximate if necessary: 114 Walnut St Glen Rose, TX USA 76043 URL of a web site with more information about the history mentioned on the sign: Not listed

Visit Instructions:
Take a picture of the marker, preferably including yourself or your GPSr in the photo. A very detailed description of your visit may be substituted for a photo. In any case please provide a description of your visit. A description of only "Visited" or "Saw it while on vacation" by anyone other than the person creating the waymark may be deleted by the waymark owner or the category officers.

Recent Visits/Logs:

There are no logs for this waymark yet.