By WILLIAM A. MONIZ

By WILLIAM A. MONIZ



Fall River Spirit Correspondent



Last spring's monsoon rains caused heavy damage in many parts of the city, but in one case, the flood helped unearth a piece of history.



The destruction along Mount Hope Avenue just east of Bay Street was particularly severe. In the aftermath, as workers dug a trench to replace a severed gas line to the nearby St. Anne's Fraternity, they were greeted with a surprise. Deep in the ditch glinted the butt-end of a seemingly intact bottle.



"Mike Rua and I were watching the excavation when all of a sudden, this bottle appeared," said Fraternity Vice President Donald Arsenault.



Rua, the club's president, grabbed a shovel and hopped into the dig to retrieve the find.



"Mike carefully dug around it and finally, out came what looked like a clear glass soda bottle," Arsenault said.



Rua added, "I originally was going after some colored glass next to it, but it turned out to be only a shard."



After a bit of cleaning and closer examination, the pair were surprised to discover that their find was instead a beer bottle, embossed with the profile likeness of an Indian chief and the following nomenclature: "King Phillip Brewing Co., Fall River Mass, Registered."

"I'd never even heard of the brand and I've been a beer drinker all my life," Arsenault said, laughing.



It's difficult to pin down the age of any antique bottle with absolute certainty. But before the turn of the 20th Century, most beer bottles were either brown or green glass and usually were hand-blown. This bottle's clear glass, "champagne" shape, brand embossing and perfectly round, unmarked base, points to it being an early machine-made example, dating to between 1900 and 1910.



And, as it turns out, the bottle is a link to Fall River's long-lost brewing industry.



In the latter half of the 19th century and well into the 20th, most beer was dispensed from 54-gallon barrels called "hogsheads." Long before the concept of the package store, beer traveled from the brewery by horse-drawn wagon to its primary retail outlet, the saloon. Because of the hills, Fall River breweries needed more horsepower, often employing three-horse teams on their wagons rather than the more common two-horse hitch used in other cities.



It's estimated that at the turn of the 20th century, breweries controlled upwards of 80 percent of American saloons. Typically, the brewery would finance the saloon keeper who in turn would agree to sell only his sponsor's brands. Aside from the considerable amount of product consumed on premises, the neighborhood saloon was virtually the only source of beer available for home consumption. Although all manner of pitchers, pots and jars were dutifully filled and priced by the bartender, customers generally used tin pails called growlers to carry their beer home or to their workplace for a lunchtime beverage.



Before 1910, three breweries stood in Fall River: Enterprise Brewing Co., Old Colony Brewing Co. and King Phillip Brewing Co. In 1894, the original Enterprise Brewing Co. began operations at 50 Glasgow St., a couple of blocks from Brayton Avenue. Old Colony started production four years later at 866 Davol St.



Although King Phillip's exact year of origin is unclear, its location was 17 Charles St., just west of Bay Street on the site now occupied by Gold Medal Bakery. It is thought to have begun operations circa 1900.



According to contemporary newspaper reports excerpted in Dr. Phillip T. Silvia's "Victorian Vistas, Volume III," King Phillip Brewing held a public open house in the late summer of 1907 to showcase a newly installed bottling line.



From the September 6, 1907 newspaper: "Half a dozen distinct machines, each one a marvel of mechanical ingenuity and each very costly, compose the bottling plant. It cost the company, complete, $40,000, and will turn out 18,000 bottles, filled with beer, capped and labeled in a day of 10 hours."

A reported 10,000 visitors toured the brewery during the event, and according to the newspaper account, "with the eatables were served King Phillip lager and ale specially brewed for the occasion."



In 1910, Old Colony Brewing acquired Enterprise Brewing and one year later added King Phillip Brewing to the fold. The three consolidated Fall River breweries operated under the Old Colony name with headquarters at Davol Street until the advent of Prohibition. In 1920, like the rest of the country, Fall River's beer taps would be shut off — at least legally — for the next 13 years.



With the repeal of Prohibition in 1933, the consolidated companies, now renamed Enterprise Brewing Co., resumed operations at the modernized and enlarged Davol Street plant near the bottom of President Avenue. Under the direction of its president, Adolf F. Haffenreffer, Sr., the suds again began to flow.



Although the brewery's flagship brands were Old Tap Ale and Bohemian (Boh) Lager Beer, the company brewed and marketed a number of ancillary labels such as Enterprise Bock Beer, Yankee Trader Beer and White Seal Ale. Shortly after the brewery's restart in 1933, the King Phillip brand was briefly resurrected with offerings of Ale, Beer and Porter in bottles bearing the familiar Indian chief logo on paper labels. The brand was permanently retired in 1940.



Following World War II, and throughout the prosperous 1950s, the brewing business underwent significant changes. Local breweries, once the staple of the industry, faced increasing competition from regional and national brands with large advertising and marketing budgets (think Budweiser, Miller, Schlitz, Schaefer, etc.).



An inevitable consolidation took place and few local and independent brewers survived. Unable to remain profitable, Fall River's Enterprise Brewing ceased operations in 1963.