Ca. 1930s Canobie Club "Birch Beer" soda bottle label
Not only did the Salem Coca-Cola bottling plant bottle the ever popular Coca-Cola line of beverages, the facility also produced beverages customized for the local market. One such beverage was "Canobie Club" soda. With a name that was synonymous with wonderful memories of summers spent at Canobie Lake, there would certainly have been a demand for the product. In cities across the United States anyone could get a Coca-Cola, but only in the Salem and Windham area could you get a Canobie Club "Birch Beer" or a "Lemon & Lime" soda. To tout its local connection, every bottle label displayed the headline "Made in the Hills of Old New Hampshire." Unlike its other soda counterparts, the soda was marketed as a great beverage for the health-conscious with the slogan: "Its purity renders it supreme as a healthful and satisfying drink." To stand out from the rather plain labels of other sodas, each bottle was given a brightly colored label with a large graphic of two young men rowing a canoe on Canobie Lake. Even the cork-lined bottle caps were printed with the image. Evidently there was not as much demand for the "Canobie Club" line as the producers had imagined because the line was likely discontinued by the 1950s. Salem Coca-Cola went on to continue its bottling of more standard Coca-Cola products.
2 ca. 1930s Canobie Club cork-lined soda bottle caps
