Editorâs Note: This is the 391st in a series of articles recalling vanished Huntington scenes.
HUNTINGTON â Long interested in soft drinks, George Rackensperger in 1939 created a company to brew and bottle a new brand of soft drink, Frostie Old Fashion Root Beer.
Rackensperger located his new venture in an unusual location â an abandoned jailhouse in Catonsville, Maryland, a suburb of Baltimore. He utilized the garage that formerly housed the police wagon to set up his bottling equipment and used the various jail cells to store sugar, bottles and the other supplies needed.
The new root beer was an immediate hit and soon Rackensperger left the jailhouse behind to construct a new modern bottling plant. Over the next decade, numerous companies elsewhere requested and were given the authorization to sell his tasty creation.