Price’s Bottling Works/Coca-Cola Bottling Co.

1920—1965

The story of the Buckhannon Coca-Cola Bottling Company is partially a story of Herbert Leroy Price—of Price’s Bottling Works, fully detailed separately below—and the rest is of the Clarksburg Coca-Cola Bottling Company. Much of this information is courtesy of the Upshur County Historical Society’s own article (2020) on Price. We will begin with his story, at the point in which he became involved in Coca-Cola.

In 1920, Price sublet the rights to bottle Coca-Cola in Upshur County, as the Clarksburg Coca-Cola Bottling Company purchased those rights in 1904 but found Upshur County to be too logistically difficult to serve at the time. The plant expanded as business did, with the operation adding a building at the back between 1923 and 1930, and the garages in the rear were outfitted to cool beer.

To ensure an adequate water supply, Price even drilled his own well in the plant itself, piping the water throughout the plant and into his family’s apartment above it. In 1940, the business incorporated and 10 shares of the company were distributed such that H.L. received 8, C.L. received 1, and H.H. received 1. They soon realized that incorporating did not prevent the stocks from being sold outside of the family. This was a problem, as they wanted to ensure it remained a family enterprise. So, later that year, they amended their filing such that no stocks could be sold to anyone outside of the lineage of the family.

His children gleefully reaped the benefits of having a father that bottled sugary drinks—one of the daughters remarked that the girls were known to have “the best fudge in town.” When his son, H.H. Price, attended West Virginia Weslyan College, Herbert supported the school newspaper through Coca-Cola advertisements.

H.L. Price passed in 1957. The plant and bottling business went to his wife, May Virginia Price. Her and H.H. Price ran the outfit together until she passed away just a year later, in 1958. After her passing, the two sons—H.H. and C.L. Price—inherited the bottling operation. C.L. Price would come to be the sold owner of the plant itself, while H.H. Price became president of the Buckhannon Coca-Cola Bottling Company. In this arrangement, C.L. Price leased some of the plant to his brother H.H. to manufacture the soda. C.L. Price passed away in 1963, with his wife being left with the bottling works, which she then sold with the terms that H.H. be allowed to continue on the lease.

In 1965, the Clarksburg Coca-Cola Bottling Works came knocking again after 45 years of Price family operation—Thomas E. Lee, president of the Clarksburg Coca-Cola Bottling Works, purchased the operation from H.H. Price. And so ended the independent Buckhannon Coca-Cola Bottling Works.