Biedenharn Coca-Cola Museum

Before Joseph Biedenharn bottled Coca-Cola in this building in the summer of 1894, the drink existed only at soda fountains. He ran a wholesale candy company out of one side of the two-story brick structure his father and uncle owned at 1107 Washington Street, built in 1890. Rural customers outside Vicksburg had no fountain access, so Biedenharn bottled the eight-year-old Atlanta invention and delivered it to them. He sent a case to Coca-Cola headquarters. The company didn't pursue the idea. Biedenharn's father had told him to "go into the nickel business" — offer soft drinks for five cents each. Prior to 1900, many people would hold on to a dime but spend a nickel for pleasure. What Biedenharn invented wasn't just bottling. It was the independent franchise bottler network, a distribution model that became the foundation of Coca-Cola's global reach. He and his brothers Will, Harry, Lawrence, Herman, Ollie, Albert, and sister Katy eventually acquired bottling franchises across Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. They bottled Coca-Cola in other downtown Vicksburg locations until 1938, when they built a new plant at 2133 Washington Street and sold this building. In 1979, the family bought it back, renovated it, and donated it to the Vicksburg Foundation for Historic Preservation as a museum. The 1890s soda fountain still works. You can stand where the distributor model that put Coca-Cola in every roadside store began — not in Atlanta, but in a Mississippi river town delivering to customers the fountains couldn't reach.