Decota
Decota, West Virginia is a defunct coal town in southern Kanawha County. There were three coal companies in the town, including the Belleclair Coal Company, the Carbon Coal Company, and the Carbon Fuel Company. Notably, none of these are the Cabin Creek Land Company. There is, however, a merchant token for the Cabin Creek Land Company which Schenkman (2009) notes was a wholesale and retail dealer of various household goods. I imagine this would have been a store for those who did not earn scrip, or they may have accepted scrip at a steep rate, as some shops near coal towns did. These bottles date to the early 1910s to the 1920s. There are four known variants. The only not pictured here is a paneled, colorless one.
Cabin Creek Land Co.
1910—1918; 1920—1973
The first appearance of the Cabin Creek Land Company in Dun & Bradstreet is in September of 1911, though at this time they were meat dealers. An image from the Cabin Creek Flood of 1910 proves, however, that the soft drink department of Cabin Creek Land Company existed at this time (see below the bottle gallery). In at least 1918, the manager of the company was Henry Nunnenkamp (“Cabin Creek”, 1918). For some stretch of eighteen years, Malcolm H. Hix was the manager of the company (“Clerk In”, 1933). Though I haven’t been able to confirm it, I suspect that a company from 1917 to 1920 named the “Decota Refreshing Co.,” which manufactured soft drinks, was Cabin Creek Land Co. as well, as the latter disappeared from Decota these years but reemerges. To make it more confusing, Cabin Creek Land Co. existed alongside Decota Refreshing Co. in 1920, then the latter disappears as well. In 1973, the president of the company, Rose Ellen Cline, issued a notice of dissolution, marking the formal end of its operations (“Application For”, 1973).
A BIMAL, aqua blue Cabin Creek Land Co. bottle from their Soft Drink Department.
An ABM, aqua green bottle with lot of embossing.
A colorless, ABM bottle from them branded with Smile.
An image of Decota after the Cabin Creek Flood of 1910. Notice the Soft Drink Factory building on the far left of the picture, beside Cabin Creek Land Company.
Image courtesy of Kenneth King.
References
Application for certificate of dissolution. (1973, November 29). The Charleston Daily Mail, 11.
Cabin Creek, Decota. (1918, September 9). The Charleston Daily Mail, 3.
Clerks in first office. (1933, February 12). The Charleston Daily Mail, 11.
Mercantile Agency, R.G. Dun & Company & Dun And Bradstreet. (1911) Dun and Bradstreet Reference Book: September, Vol. 174, part 2. New York, September 1. [Periodical] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/sep1911v174p2/.
Mercantile Agency, R.G. Dun & Company & Dun And Bradstreet. (1917) Dun and Bradstreet Reference Book: September, Vol. 198, part 2. New York, September 1. [Periodical] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/sep1917v198p2/.
Mercantile Agency, R.G. Dun & Company & Dun And Bradstreet. (1920) Dun and Bradstreet Reference Book: September, Vol. 210, part 2. New York, September 1. [Periodical] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/sep1920v210p2/.
Schenkman, D.E. (2009). West Virginia merchant tokens. Token and Medal Society, Inc.