Beermakers

Its Friday and five o’clock somewhere. In 1900 the good fellows at the Puget Sound Brewing Company were doing some celebrating. Their fine product was on full display and samples were available all around. Fifteen years or so before prohibition, these Tacoma brewers made up a workforce of more than 1500 people employed in the making and distributing of excellent beers and ales. Before refrigeration, beer came in dated wood casks and Tacoma branded into the oak was a very good sign. Puget Sound Brewery made a German style lager and their wagons worked up and down Commercial street every morning delivering their products to the back doors of restaurants and bars fronting on Pacific and Broadway. The whole enterprise appears to be assembled and on display for this photo at the Holgate Street brewery’s loading dock. The Puget Sound Brewery tapped into the artisan wells that laced the hillside under the brewery district and had its own rail siding (underfoot here) for arriving Puyallup Valley hops, block ice, barrels and bottles and feed for the attached stables.Somebody needs to check the ID on that kid in the second row though.