Lithia water is a type of mineral water than contains lithium salts. It was a popular water to consume at the end of the 1800s into the early 1900s. While there are natural lithia spring waters, many companies instead added lithia bicarbonate instead. Cañon City boasted its own Lithia Bottling plant which used water from the nearby soda springs which had trace amounts of lithium.
This plant was located at 308 Main Street for a short time in the 1920s. It was opened by J.M. Egan in 1922 and, alongside mineral water, the company produced carbonated beverages with fruit flavors. In 1925, J. D. Brown was the manager but the factory had already disappeared from the directory by 1927. The company may have been short lived, but an image of the plant fortunately found its way to the museum archives as a reminder of one of Cañon City’s bottling plants.
To read a brief history of another bottling company in Cañon City, the Stockder Bottling Works, click here.
The information presented in this article is compiled using research conducted by the Royal Gorge Regional Museum and History Center.