The image that opens this post is of a celluloid bar token with a face value of 12.5 cents. Two of them would be enough to buy a shot of reasonably good whiskey at the Owl Liquor Company and saloon in Eureka, Nevada. Not long ago that token was sold at auction for $2,600, enough to buy 5,000 shots and set ‘em up for most every drinking man, in 19th Century Eureka.
Shown below in the late 1800s, Eureka was a boom town. The community, shown above, had been settled in 1864 by a group of prospectors who had discovered silver-lead rock, attracting two competing mining companies to the area. Mining for silver and lead triggered an economic boom town to emerge, one that in 1873 became, and still is, the county seat. The town’s population surged, reaching 10,000 by 1878.
To satisfy the ever-thirsty miners, liquor companies and saloons proliferated, among them a “watering hole” called The Owl Liquor Company. Although the identity of the proprietor has faded into the mists of history, he left us a trade card that purports to offer a bit of “Western philosophy.
The Eureka saloon keeper showed similar imagination in issuing bar tokens, usually minted from metals like copper and iron. He was using celluloid — celluloid — the world’s first industrial plastic. Put into mass production in 1872, celluloid rapidly became popular for its ability to be shaped and to carry elaborate colored lithographic images. In particular it was suited as backing for small items that could be stowed away in a pocket. Because celluloid took color well it proved a good venue for advertising, as the proprietor of the Owl Liquor Company saloon realized.
He provided his customers with a winsome picture of a baby girl with long curly hair, wearing a frilly dress and holding a large red rose. It is a highly attractive image, one that a customer might wish to keep as a “lucky piece” rather than trade it at the Owl bar for half a drink of whiskey. The company and artist behind the token are not revealed. My surmise is that it may have been the product of the Celluloid Manufacturing Company of Newark, New Jersey.
Owl Liquor also produced a second celluloid drinks token. This one, however, lacks the innocence of the first. Shown below it depicts a semi-nude woman with a “come hither” look and gesture, wearing what appear to be a few shreds of clothing. This token shows signs of discoloration typical of many aging celluloid artifacts. It also has sold in recent years, fetching $1,300 at auction despite its less than pristine condition.
The Owl Liquor Company likely went out of business as national prohibitionary laws and finally a “dry” Constitutional amendment was adopted in 1919. By that time the silver and lead mines had played out. Eureka’s population plummeted from about 10,000 to 414 today. (2020 census). The town is shown here as it currently looks.
As “The Loneliest Road in America,” U.S. Route 50 at Eureka is one of the locations where the U.S. National Park Service provides a stamp for its travel “passport.” attesting that the user has accessed Eureka and its main street. Of course the town museum, in a former newspaper office, must be open to obtain the certification.
My assumption is that the Owl Liquor Company had its own house brand of liquor, as did most other saloons that advertised themselves as companies, indicating a business beyond just serving drinks over a bar. That tradition is being carried on by Joe and Lauren Luben in Eureka. They are owners of a blended whiskey line they call “Two Bitch,” named after their dogs. Three bourbon varieties are created in their building shown in the photo. In Eureka’s boom days the structure was a Methodist Church and now a tourist stop.
Eureka is living proof that no place in America is too small or too isolated to produce whiskey.
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