Vacation Cans

This month I want to take a quick peek at Vacation Cans. These are oddball cans from other regions that show up in dumps by popular vacation spots, prompting the questions "What is that brand doing here?"

Of course, not every can from a different region is a tourist or vacation can. Some breweries sold their product a long way from home, especially in areas where there were few local breweries with which they had to compete. For example, a lot of Ebling crowntainers from New York City show up in New Mexico. I've dumped Cremos from Connecticut along the northern most part of the Virginia/West Virginia border. Several Chicago brands, such as English Lad show up in the Pacific Northwest as well as in New England.

How then, can you tell a tourist can from one that was simply sold a long way from home? The easiest way is by the tax stamp. A lot of states required a stamped lid on cans of beer sold in that state to show that the state alcohol tax had been paid. The Perfection can shown here is an example I found last May. It's a Pennsylvania brand and the can has a Pennsylvania tax stamp on the top. I found a bunch of them in a campground dump in western Massachusetts.

The spot where they are found is another clue. Tourist/vacation cans can be found where you find tourists and people on vacation. The dump where I found this Perfection contained thousands and thousands of cans, almost all of which were from the 1950s. There were a small number of cans from the very early 1960s, and non (to date) from before 1950. Most of the brands were typical ones we dump all the time in western Massachusetts: Rheingold, Schaefer, and Rupperts from New York, Hulls from Connecticut, Krueger and Ballantine from New Jersey, and Dawson's and Hampdens from Massachusetts. There were also Edelweiss from Chicago and Goebel's from Michigan. In both cases these are most certainly brands that were trying to spread their marketing area beyond the Midwest. (I discussed Goebel earlier).

Campground dumps have a different mix from most household dumps. They tend to have more beer and liquor containers and fewer from food and cleaning supplies. We also found a lot of soda cans in this particular spot, although they were a small minority of the cans.

We also found Gunthers in this dump. I could not see a tax stamp, but it's the first time I've found Gunthers this far north, which makes me think they were also tourist cans. Maryland had done away with tax stamped lids by the time these Gunther cans were used, so we can not tell for certain.

 

Here is another can that was probably a tourist can, a POC from Cleveland I found only a few feet from an old fishing cabin in the Adirondacks. Cans from northern Ohio show up in that part of New York state, but usually cans from before World War II. This is a 1950s can. Moreover, we only found six of them amid all the normal New York brands in the same spot: Schaefer, Genesee, Rupperts, and some Tudors from Hornell in New York. I can imagine someone from north-eastern Ohio showing up for a weekend of fishing with buddies, and bringing a six pack of his hometown beer to share. The Black labels wer ealso from Cleveland, but that brewery was actively expanding it marketing area and so can be found much further east than POCs.

Vacationing

Of course there is a long relationship between vacationing and alcohol, including beer, especially in regards to men going on vacation.