Hires To You headerThe Illustrated History of Hires Root Beer

1874 

IT HAPPENED IN…1874

The women’s crusade against liquor traffic in the Midwest led to founding of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union.

The first steel bridge in the U.S. was built over the Mississippi River at St. Louis.

Barbed wire provided an economical way to fence land, requiring cowboys to become ranchers and providing farmers a way to protect crops from marauding cattle.

Chautauquas were founded by Methodist clergymen as annual summer meetings.

Lawn tennis appeared in the U.S. 

Collegiate rugby football began with a match between Harvard and McGill University.

The Philadelphia Zoological Gardens, the first U.S. public zoo, was opened.

Gustave Trouve invented the first metal detector.

Circa 1874 Charles E. Hires sold his retail drug store and established a wholesale drug business at a location on Market Street in Philadelphia.  According to “The Story of Hires” biographical article published in Printers’ Ink Monthly in 1921, “For years he successfully manufactured and sold flavoring extracts, and was a large importer of vanilla beans and crude drugs.”