Waco’s heritage includes a soda that’s older than Coca-Cola

Visitors to Waco, Texas, who will be in town for the total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024, are invited to quench their thirst before or after the big event with a “shot of Waco.” 

The drink was invented in 1885 at the soda fountain inside Morrison’s Old Corner Drugstore in Waco. A polite, young pharmacist named Charles Courtice Alderton would promptly serve you a “Waco” carbonated soft drink – a “sweet concoction of 23 different flavors.”

 

When he wasn’t busy mixing up medicines, Alderton dabbled behind the soda fountain counter. He “liked the way the drug store smelled, with all of the fruit syrup flavor smells mixing together in the air.” He decided to create a drink that tasted as good as it smelled.

 

Patrons loved his new “Waco” beverage, advertised as America’s first soft drink product, predating Coca-Cola by a year. 

As the pharmacy owner, Wade B. Morrison renamed “Waco” as Dr. Pepper. Morrison died in 1924 at age 71, without revealing why he chose that name. (We do know that in 1950, the “period” was eliminated to form Dr Pepper.)

 

Over the years, the staff at Waco’s iconic Dr Pepper Museum has collected more than a dozen different stories about how the drink became known as Dr Pepper. It may simply have been an attempt to imply the beverage was a medicinal elixir. 

The old bottles contained the numerals 10, 2 and 4. Drink one at 10 a.m. between breakfast and lunch. Drink two between lunch and dinner – at 2 and 4 p.m.

 

There’s a petition drive in Waco “to nudge the Texas legislature toward approving Dr Pepper as the “Official Soft Drink of the Lone Star State.” Fans of Dr Pepper say the Waco-born pepper-upper beverage is already the “national soda pop of Texas.” 

Texas Monthly magazine noted: “Some might suggest the designation is merely a formality. Who wants to be the state legislator to vote against Dr Pepper?”

 

It’s entirely possible, however, that Big Red could get a vote or two. It’s sort of a younger cousin of Dr Pepper, also born and bred in Waco. 

Randy Fiedler, a marketing and communications officer at Baylor University in Waco, said Big Red was invented in 1937 by chemist Grover Cleveland Thomsen and businessman R.H. Roark at Waco’s Perfection Barber and Beauty Supply.

 

Though Big Red has classically been marketed as a “red cream soda,” the beverage’s taste has been compared to a hybrid of traditional bubblegum, Juicy Fruit chewing gum and pink cotton candy…but not too sweet. The unique taste is created by combining lemon and orange oils along with the traditional vanilla flavoring used in other cream sodas, Fiedler explained. 

Gary Smith, owner of Big Red, moved the company headquarters to Austin, Texas, but production has remained in Waco. Big Red is distributed by various independent soft drink bottlers, although Dr Pepper has about 80% of Big Red’s bottling business. 

Outdoorsmen have additional uses for Big Red fountain syrup. The late Charlie Pack was an avid Waco fisherman. He found that dough balls lacquered with Big Red proved to be the best bait for catching the most fish (mostly carp). 

Deer hunters would mooch scoops of Big Red syrup, too, and rub it on cotton balls that were placed in their deer feeders. The aroma would entice the deer to prance right up. 

The folks at Frosty’s Soda Shop in the Dr Pepper Museum in Waco can mix up fountain versions of Dr Pepper and Big Red…the old-fashioned way. Taste them both.