Reprinted from It’s the Water News, November 1961

The town of Kunze, Nevada, lived one year. It drew its first lusty breath in 1905, thrived wildly and expired in abandonment, leaving a legacy to the world of 20 tons of copper.

Located on the east rim and near the summit of Black Mountain, Kunze faces Death Valley as it slowly reverts to the dust from which it sprang. Sage brush, rattlesnake furrows and hare prints have reclaimed Main Street. Scattered debris yet unburied by the driving winds poke through rippled sand like sinking ships. Crudely sculptured stone huts against the mountain, vestiges of habitation so far have defied the elements.

You won’t find Kunze on a regional map today. It’s forgotten except by the few who may have stumbled upon its ruins by chance. Then there are hobbyists like the Howard Lindrooths of Las Vegas who prospect, study and classify relics from the Old West. Their expeditions take them to the ghost towns of Nevada in their small truck.

In Kunze the Lindrooths found an empty beer bottle. It was a quart of the 1900 variety, molded from thick green glass. They thought the embossed markings on the body of the bottle were unusual. The words “Olympia Beer Company” and the letters “S.F. Cal.” brought a letter of inquiry from the Lindrooths. They wanted to know if the Olympia Brewing Company of Tumwater was related to a Olympia Beer Company of San Francisco, circa 1900. Bump [Schmidt] was company spokesman in the correspondence, which ended by the Lindrooths offering to return to Kunze just to take some pictures for our use.

Olympia Beer has never been brewed anyplace but here [Tumwater].  However, at one time your company owned and operated breweries in Bellingham, Port Townsend, Salem, Oregon, and San Francisco. Around the turn of the century, Olympia Beer was shipped by boat in hogsheads (63 gallon casks) to San Francisco where it was bottled, packaged and distributed throughout California and the mining sections of Nevada. The bottle the Lindrooths discovered came from this plant.

There was an attempt to brew Olympia Beer in San Francisco. Using the same ingredients, the same technical skill—even a brew kettle that had been shipped from Tumwater—the finished product lacked the consistent excellence upon which our reputation has been built. The only difference being in the natural brewing water available at Tumwater.

Today your company does not have financial or operating interest in any other brewery or brewery property. The plant in San Francisco is empty. Ironically, it weathered the earthquake and conflagration of 1906 by utilizing its own generating equipment and bottling pumps to suck water from the bay and drench the flames. It was spared immediate destruction, like Kunze, Nevada, to bend inevitably to time’s ravage.

Illustrations:

• Miners’ huts in Kunze, Nevada.
• Site where bottle was found in Kunze.
• Lindrooth bottle.
• San Francisco bottle in Schmidt House collection. The bottle found by the Lindrooths was green glass, whereas ours is dark brown.