The town of Marion in Southwest Virginia is working to market itself as the birthplace of Mountain Dew.
The story of the soft drink began in Tennessee, said Marion’s economic director, Ken Heath. “It’s like many successes there are many fathers to it,” Heath said. “The original Mountain Dew was invented in the 1940s down in Knoxville as a liquor chaser.”
Then, Tri-City beverage, in Johnson City, got interested in making a lemon-lime soft drink. They called a man in Marion, named Bill Jones, who was known regionally for his skills at mixing soda recipes.
“He got the original recipe and started tinkering with it here in town,” Heath said.
He said some Marion residents remember Jones showing up to their house, with a tray of drinks for their family to taste-test. Or he’d go onto the street and get people to see what they thought of his latest version.
“And sometimes were so caffeinated they’d blow the top of your head off, sometimes they would have so much citrus in there it’d just almost turn your stomach,” Heath said.
Eventually he and folks at Tri-City beverage settled on a version, and began bottling it in Tennessee. In the 1960s, PepsiCo bought the recipe.
A plaque is being made to celebrate Marion’s claim to the history, and Heath said the town is hoping to have a debut celebration sometime next year.
There is also talk about having a Mountain Dew museum at the location where Bill Jones first made Mountain Dew.
“So that’s the next thing on the list. Let’s get the marker in here, let’s get the celebration going, and then let’s find a way to continue,” There is also talk about having a small museum at the location where Bill Jones first made Mountain Dew.
“So that’s the next thing on the list. Let’s get the marker in here, let’s get the celebration going, and then let’s find a way to continue to celebrate by having a Mountain Dew Celebrate destination in the mountains of Southwest Virginia,” Heath said.
There is an existing collection of Mountain Dew memorabilia at the Reece Museum at East Tennessee State University in Johnson City. The curator, Spenser Brenner, has researched the history of Mountain Dew, and said most of the details of the soda’s backstory were not written down, and most of the people involved were friends doing handshake deals, so it’s difficult to know for sure who made which recipe when, or where. But he agreed with Heath that the Knoxville version was the first, but in the 1950s, Bill Bridgforth at Tri-City Beverage worked with Bill Jones to develop the Tri-City lemonade flavor. This flavor was eventually bottled as Mountain Dew and that’s the version of Mountain Dew that resembles what is bottled and sold today.
He said according to Dick Bridgforth, who wrote a book about the history, his father, Bill Bridgforth, of Tri-City Beverage in Johnson City is the one who developed the Tri-City Lemonade recipe, with Jones, but the recipe we know today was a collaboration between several different people. "After developing the flavor with Bill Bridgforth, Bill Jones mixed every batch of the concentrate for Mountain Dew by hand and these two men were the only two to know the formula until it was sold in 1964 to Pepsi," Brenner said.
Heath said he doesn’t want to draw away attention from Tennessee. Rather, he’s hoping Marion can be part of a regional tourism effort.
“One of the things that the Appalachian region here, in northeast Tennessee and southwest Virginia, that we tend to overlook is the opportunity to work together collaboratively,” Heath said. “If we come together, we’re gonna be unstoppable. And I’m hoping that Mountain Dew is the key to that.”
