Archives West Finding Aid

The original Anaconda Brewery was built in Anaconda, Montana, near Walnut and West Fourth streets and operated by Joe Paul and Joseph Steger, later joined by John V. Petritz. About 1900 Henry Mueller took control of the Anaconda Brewery. Mueller also owned Centennial Brewery in Butte, the Billings Brewery, and was part owner of the Olympia Brewery. The Anaconda Brewery buildings also included a Brewery Saloon and Beer Garden and a bowling alley, which was added in 1914.

Mueller's brother-in-law, Adam Tuchscherer, became a bookkeeper at the Anaconda Brewing Company. In 1908 Adam Tuchscherer became president of the brewery. In 1916 when Prohibition went into effect in Montana, all breweries and liquor stores closed. The Anaconda Brewing Company became the Anaconda Products Company, and continued to bottle soft drinks. The machinery of the Walnut Street Brewery in Anaconda was sold to a Canadian brewery and the building was taken down in 1927. When the brewery went dry, Tuchscherer bought all the shares of the brewery.

After the repeal of Montana's Prohibition in 1926, the Anaconda Brewing Company was reopened at 1200 East Park in Anaconda, Montana, by Adam Tuchscherer and his two sons, Arthur and Walter on July 1, 1933. The bottling works and office remained on Walnut Street until 1939, when a new addition was made on the Park Street side of the brewery. Adam Tuchscherer died in 1944, but Adam and Walter continued the production of Rocky Mountain Beer until 1955. In 1958 the Anaconda Brewery closed and the soft drink division became the Sugrue Bottling Company.