Glass Bottles from Three Rivers
Our path to the Three Rivers side of the Hoffmann-Hayman line started in an online write-up of Michael David Smith’s TEXAS GLASS: An Illustrated History of The Three Rivers Glass Company, 1922–1937 that pictured the H and H Crystalvac jar. The book itself is a thin, light periwinkle softcover with a centered type stack, a byline to Smith at the base, and a cover photograph of an embossed 3 RIVERS milk bottle in front of mold hardware — a fair preview of the company marks on glass we would later go looking for in the field.
After we mailed a check to Austin, Texas, to buy a copy of the book from the author, the text set out how Three Rivers is connected to H and H Coffee. That widened the artifact search, and we began collecting Three Rivers Glass Company items in general.
On the day of this post we closed six eBay lots of bottles for the collection: Trinity Bottling Works, Milwaukee Drinks, Dragon Bottling (San Antonio), City Bottling Works, a 3 Rivers Texas clear-glass mark, and Diamond K (Kingsville). At the time they were all in hand as regional glass, not a matched set, anchoring the same collecting lane as the Crystalvac jars.
Update: Five bottles from that June 2014 purchase were later sold to Mac Johanson (Three Rivers, TX): Diamond K (HH-BOTTLE-2014-0001), the Shiner-era listing clear crown-top bottle (HH-BOTTLE-2014-0002), City Bottling Works (HH-BOTTLE-2014-0004), Milwaukee Drinks (HH-BOTTLE-2014-0005), and Trinity Bottling Works (HH-BOTTLE-2014-0006). The Dragon Bottling (San Antonio) embossed soda bottle (HH-BOTTLE-2014-0003) is the only bottle from that six-lot run still in the San Antonio collection (physical inventory 2026-05). Separately accessioned Three Rivers glass still held includes the Delaware Punch bottle (HH-BOTTLE-2015-0001) and the Javo comparandum (HH-BOTTLE-2017-0001). See the accession register. Collection-period object photography for the transferred clear crown-top listing (HH-BOTTLE-2014-0002) is on the Shiner-listing object page.
Additional regional soda bottles (Balloon, Hippo Soda, Dr Pepper 10-2-4, Nehi, Smile) followed the same Mac Johanson transfer path; collection-period photographs of those pieces are gathered on the regional sodas archive page.
