MARION, Va. — Mountain Dew can do more for Marion — its birthplace — than just provide bragging rights.
Developer Joe Ellis is confident that while preserving an aspect of the community’s heritage, a museum dedicated to the popular lemon-lime soda could also bolster the local economy through tourism.
Ellis has been researching the idea since 2010. This fall, he and several other developers took a major step forward, purchasing the Hayden’s World building, an adjoining structure and related apartments in downtown Marion. For several decades, the structure housed the Marion Drug Co.
Last month, Ellis said he and the four other partners in Callan Farm Investments would like to restore the drug store’s soda fountain and open the Mountain Dew Museum complete with a retail souvenir shop.
According to a variety of accounts, Marion resident Bill Jones worked to get all the necessary rights and tinker with the formula for the soft drink, eventually creating the taste that made it famous. He sold it to Pepsi-Cola in 1964.
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Part of the taste came from a Tennessee company that gave its recipe for an unsuccessful whisky mixer to Jones as part of another transaction. That company had apparently dubbed its drink “Mountain Dew,” a throwback to the days of moonshine.
Over the years, more than one dispute about Mountain Dew’s beginning has arisen.
Speaking at the Holston River Heritage Center in 2015, Joseph T. Lee III shared his research into the history of soda bottling in the area, including the feud over Mountain Dew’s origins.
“I often joke that I was weaned on Mountain Dew,” he said. “As a soda, Mountain Dew’s history isn’t really that interesting. It’s the feud between all of those, and their decedents, trying to lay claim to creating it that makes it interesting. I am just a fan of the brand, and I’m fascinated by the search for the real history of what actually happened.”
Lee donated two historic Mountain Dew bottles to the Main Street museum.
In his research, Ellis found that about 40,000 people a year visit the birthplace of Pepsi in New Bern, North Carolina. Additionally, he said that as many or more people make the trek to the Dr. Pepper Museum in Waco, Texas.
“If we can bring even 25,000 to downtown Marion, it would be a huge boost,” said Ellis.
On the corner of Main and Chestnut streets, Ellis believes the museum would be strategically located to bolster other downtown shops. With a one-time Greyhound station at its rear, Ellis foresees tour buses visiting the museum and the rest of downtown. Two buses a day, he said, would be 100 tourists.
“That could really have a positive impact,” he said.
If Rural Retreat, Virginia, which boasts connections to the origins of Dr Pepper, were to develop a celebration of those ties, Ellis said tours could stop in both towns, “becoming good bookends.”
The building’s structural foundation is strong, Ellis said, so renovations would primarily be installing new floors, painting and giving the structure a facelift, especially the upstairs apartments.
Providing different options for housing in Marion has long been a goal of Callan Investment group, which is developing Callan Drive near the Emory & Henry School of Health Sciences into a new neighborhood with recreation and a variety of home lots, apartments and more. It’s a community Ellis takes quite personally. He’s building a personal home on one of the lots.
Earlier this fall, the group also bought Park Terrace and is working to update those apartments.
“We’re trying to provide good-quality housing at different price points,” Ellis said.
The developers are also considering establishing an elder village on lower Callan that could accommodate a variety of incomes but create a sense of community. He noted that a nearby elder village has a “huge waiting list,” and half of those on the list currently live outside Virginia.
Of the elder village in Marion, Ellis said, “We’d love to see that happen.”
The COVID-19 pandemic is also heightening some individuals’ interest in living outside of major cities. “We’re beginning to see people interested in more rural areas,” said Ellis.
As for the Mountain Dew Museum’s timeline, Ellis said the group is “feeling our way through it.”
They hope to establish a nonprofit to oversee museum operations and lease the soda fountain.
Right now, Ellis would welcome copies of historic photos of the drug store’s interior, which may be dropped off at the General Francis Marion Hotel’s front desk.
“We’re excited to do that,” he declared.