Sprite Delight: National Park Bottles

By Mary T. McCarthy

It’s always fun to find a green bottle bottom, but once on a live beachcombing feed I found one that said “MILITARY” and couldn’t imagine its origin. Someone watching said “It’s a National Park Sprite!” and, happy as always to learn something from the beachcombing community, I couldn’t wait to get back to my “green” bin of glass, pull out other bottle bottoms and do some Googling.

It turns out The Coca-Cola Company has a long history with the National Park Service. In the 1930s, national parks were the settings for Coca-Cola advertisements, like a 1931 Yellowstone National Park ad depicting actual bears drinking Cokes. In the 1960s, Coca-Cola ran a bottle cap sweepstakes with the National Park Service encouraging Americans to “See America” with a grand prize worth $33,000.

As part of the 1960s promotion, and to further encourage Americans to visit parks, Coca-Cola released limited edition green Sprite bottles embossed on the bottoms with the names of 36 National Parks. The 1966 issue of Coca-Cola’s “Refresher” magazine published the list of the 36 National Parks that would be featured on the bottoms of the Sprite bottles.

Over time, Coca-Cola’s partnership with the parks has continued, with Coca-Cola pitching in $5 million for the Statue of Liberty restoration, $1 million at Yellowstone and Gettysburg National Military Parks for Visitor Education Centers, and millions to support trails programs and recycling at U.S. national parks.

I was delighted to find in my green bin that I had inadvertently collected a few of these limited edition bottle bottoms, and, while on the phone one day, I picked up my only whole Sprite bottle and discovered it was a National Park bottle! Soon after on a winter negative low tide, I found two more of them, and suddenly the list published in 1966 has become a checklist for me.

List of National Park bottles from “The Refresher,” May/June 1966, The Coca-Cola Company

So back to the beach I go. Come on, Statue of Liberty and Yellowstone, I know you’re out there!

Read more about antique and vintage bottles and how you can identify your beach glass bottle shards:

• A Rainbow of Bottle Colors
• Anatomy of a Bottle: Bottle Morphology
• Historical Bottle Lip Shapes
• Getting to the Bottom of It: Shard Identification of Bottle Bottoms
• My Indelible Love of Ink Bottles: Antique Ink Bottles
• Using Bottle Maker Marks to Identify Your Sea Glass
• Fishing for Codd in the River: Antique English Codd Bottles
• Sea Glass Pastels: Bottle origins of pastel-colored sea glass
• Treasures in the Chalk Streams: Antique bottles from England
• Vanuatu Coca Cola Bottles: Sea Foam Treasure Trove
• West Indies: Treasure Trove of Black Sea Glass
• True Daffy's Elixir Bottles
• Schlitz Royal Ruby Red Bottles

Learn how to identify your antique glass bottles

This article appeared in the Beachcombing Magazine July/August 2019 issue.