This cache is part of
my local Wheeling history tour series. The cache is a small
plastic dental tube, that is placed on the side of now empty
Schmulbach brewery factory on 33rd and Wetzel street. It
began operations in 1855 as the Frederick Ziegler Brewery. In
1873 a stock company was formed under the name of The Nail
City Brewing Company. In 1882, Henry Schmulbach gained
control of the company and changed its name to the Schmulbach
Brewing Company. Henry Schmulbach,
was a well-known businessman of Wheeling ,
and the president of the Schmulbach Brewing
company, which was one of
largest brewing establishments in West Virginia,
situated at the head of
Thirty-third street, Wheeling. Mr. Schmulbach was born in
Hesse-Darmstadt, Germany, in 1844. He came to the United States in
1852, 
with his parents, who
settled at Wheeling. Before the age of
seventeen years he engaged in the retail grocery business
in partnership with his uncle, George Feller, and four
years later, in 1865, embarked in the
wholesale liquor business. His uncle
retired
from business in January, 1870, m but Mr. Schmulbach continued it
until
1882. In 1881 he became owner of a majority of the stock of the
Nail
City Brewing company, and January 1, 1882, he took possession of
the 
property and formed the
Schmulbach Brewing company, which
incorporated a capital stock of $80,000. Mr. Schmulbach made
president and H. C. Caldwell secretary. The capacity of the old
company was from 6,000 to 8,600 barrels per year, but under the
new organization the works were immediately improved and enlarged,
new buildings were added, improved machinery was
put in, and the
capacity was gradually increased until it reached the ample
proportions of 50,000 barrels annually, and in the spring of
1890, still greater
improvements and enlargements increased the capacity to
200,000
barrels per annum. In June 30, 1886, 118,658 barrels of lager
beer. The company's business had grown so that it contemplates an
early enlargement of its capacity. Its beer was popular on account
of its purity and even quality, and had its votaries who pronounce
it the best beer made. The company had a large bottling house
adjoining the brewery. It makes a special brand of beer called
"export" for bottling, which has greater strength than the ordinary
lager. The beer could be found sold throughout West Virginia, and
in 0hio, Maryland and Pennsylvania.In Midwestern towns like
Wheeling, the brewing trade was heavily German, both in ownership
and workforce, and it was a local market industry that protected
these same owners and
workers 
The building lost a large section, when the highway next to it was
built. The brewery had huge cellars cut into the hillside 400 feet
back, with the supply of pure crystal water gushing from the hill's
spring. The brewery had some four
hundred feet of the finest cellarage that ever was associated with
any brewery, And more, the company
had an additional fermenting cellar sixty by thirty feet, with a
fine ice house over it running thirty-five feet high. Wheeling has
been home to more breweries than any other city in
West
Virginia. Not only was
it once the brewing capitol of the
State, it also held the
distinction of being one of America's major brewing centers
during nineteenth century into the early twentieth century.
For more than one hundred years beginning in 1812, at least
twenty brewing concerns operated there. By the end of the
1800s, six companies were producing a total of about 300,000
barrels a year. Prohibition arrived early for West Virginia,
going into effect in 1914. All but killing the beer industry
in the process. The sound of brewery-doors closing echoed
throughout a few more States until the law went nationwide in
1920. Some were put to other uses. Many just sat empty.
Although Prohibition was repealed in 1933, the art of making
beer did not resume in Wheeling until the craft-brewing
revolution was in full-swing in the mid-1990s. The Schmulbach
Brewing Company was the second of Wheeling's big three
breweries. The company also fell victim to Prohibition and
closed for good in 1914. The buildings still exist today and
are one of the finest examples of 19th century brewery
architecture in the country.
