The history of Mountain Dew: Tennessee’s role in the popular drink’s origin

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) — The term “Mountain Dew” has many meanings in Tennessee’s history, from its moonshine roots, country music songs, and now the soft drink.

It might not be East Tennessee’s best-kept secret, but it is something not a lot of people know about.

“Well, it’s natural. We got the mountains around here, so why not have Mountain Dew?” said Jack Neely, Executive Director of the Knoxville History Project.

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Those famous Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee were the birthplace of the soft drink we know today as “Mountain Dew.”

It was founded in 1948 by the Hartman brothers who moved to Knoxville from Georgia.

“Their names were Bernard and Aloysius Hartman, and they became Barney and Ally on the original hillbilly imagery on old the oldest Mountain Dew bottles,” said Neely.

The name came from an old slang term for moonshine: mountain dew, when “Doing the dew” had quite a different meaning.

“It was popularized by several country musicians, beginning with Uncle Dave Macon back in the 1920s, who had a song called That Good Old Mountain Dew,” and that was revived in the 1940s by Grandpa Jones.”

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But the original recipe—and the intention of the beverage—have changed quite a bit.

“The original idea was to make something like a lemon-lime soda, that kind of takes some of the edge off the taste of moonshine, and they began manufacturing this as a mixer for moonshine basically,” said Neely.

During a time when liquor sales of any kind were illegal, this mountain dew was not.

Now, the drink is commemorated with a historical marker on Magnolia Avenue in East Knoxville. A quirky fact about Knoxville, that surprises and confuses some, including Neely.

“There are a lot of things that don’t have markers, you know, major events in Knoxville history, like the state of Tennessee was founded on Gay Street and Downtown Knoxville. There was a marker there a long time ago but it vanished and hasn’t been replaced.”

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But Mountain Dew will forever have a spot here. “When you put it onto a building, you can point to a building on a street that a lot of people want to ignore and say this is where a Mountain Dew started,” said Neely. “That gives it a point on a map and something people remember. Regardless of whether it had caffeine or not, or that weird green color it has now, it was something notable that happened there.”

The Mountain Dew recipe changed over the years in Virginia when caffeine was added and the neon green color.

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