I grew up milking cows in a town far enough North to leech Canadian radio stations. Lowville, NY is surely among America’s most rural. Fondly christened as “Cowville,” the town is composed of one Main Street and three traffic lights.

Midsummer memories are a swath of green bullfrogs, cool blue ponds, white clouds and yellow corn silk. My mother, who shucked corn on a front porch overlooking Holsteins and hayfields, also brewed her own root beer — the only way to teach her daughter one of the wonders of bottling

Indeed, my mother conquered corn, beets, peaches, applesauce, pickles, and even beef with boiling water and a Mason jar. Such lessons in quaint house-wifery with her ruffian daughter usually ended in spilled sugar, broken jars, and a spike in the kitchen ant population. It was with tact that my mother reached to the back of the pantry for a three ounce bottle of root beer extract and with joy that we spent consecutive summer evenings sipping the freshly bottled beverage: cold, herbal, and full of froth.

Growing up I never did learn to can pickles or peaches. Instead, I discovered that a traveling lady finds wonder and left that small town to settle in a sunny city where Lancaster County corn is the only reminder of my rural roots. But my mother’s travails were not entirely lost on me. An inborn awareness of the deficiencies of corporate farming fostered a fierce appreciation for locally grown produce, artisanal foods and beverages… root beer among them.

While root beer is most commonly found as a fountain soda, it differs from its carbonated counterparts with a refusal to standardize its recipe. Unlike cola, whose flavor is mastered by Coca-Cola and Pepsi, hundreds of individual root beer brands stand today, all finding something worth tweaking.

The original recipe for root beer was brewed by Native Americans involving an intense relationship between sugar, yeast, hops, birch bark, wintergreen, wild cherry bark, sassafras, and some lists include as many as twenty-five berry and root combinations. It was a Philadelphia pharmacist, Charles Hires, that brought the first commercial root beer recipe to the scene in 1876.

Hires, searching for a cure-all, promised his “root tea” would purify the blood and create rosy cheeks. While an appeal to good health was Hires’ initial selling point, the beverage’s debut as “root beer” in the 1876 Centennial Expo, (the same year as the exotic tin foil wrapped banana, selling at 10-cent a crack) found many merely in love with its flavor. At the Expo, over 9 million patrons paid the 50-cent entrance fee, shoving and pushing through the 60,000 international exhibitors sprawled across Fairmount Park’s seventy acres.

Here, Hires poured free mugs of root beer and demonstrated how to transform a 25-cent packet of powder into 5 gallons of root beer. Hires soon discovered that his beverage sold better pre-mixed. Quickly meeting demand, Hires bottled root beer arrived in 1893, selling 115,000 glasses before the year ended.

Hires’ idea spread. While Hires Root Beer appeared ten years before Coca-Cola, it didn’t take long for other entrepreneurs to catch up. Roy Allen in California set up a roadside stand to sell his own root beer and in 1919 partnered with Frank Wright to form A&W Root Beer. Hires had his first competition.

However, during the Prohibition Era there was enough room for all in the non-alcoholic realm to compete. While root beer is fermented (using yeast), it contains less alcohol than a loaf of bread. As such, its popularity throughout the 20s began to infiltrate the restaurant industry. In 1922, A&W franchised into a series of drive-ins featuring spunky young carhops serving curbside on roller skates, all dishing up America’s first fast food with a tall glass of tap drawn root beer. But they weren’t the only ones; Weber’s Root Beer Drive In, established in 1933, was also built around (you guessed it) root beer.

Philadelphians recognize Weber’s as that bright orange roadside in Pennsauken, but the Weber’s story is worth more than a drive by. Oscar Weber was a farmer who brewed a noteworthy 14- ingredient recipe for root beer, finishing it with a lengthy store in birch barrels. On the July fourth, 1891, Weber reportedly discovered the hamburger while entertaining friends. Sizzling beef patties on his homemade grill, Weber made sandwiches using his wife’s sour dough rolls. They enraptured the neighborhood. In 1933 he opened his flagship in Brookside, OK, serving burgers with root beer.

The combination of fast food and fountain soda stuck. In 1940 Richard and Mac McDonald flew the first golden arches in San Bernardino, CA. McDonald’s eventually signed contracts with Barq’s-owning Coca Cola, bringing Barq’s in as the number two most sold brand in the root beer race (After all, as of this year McDonalds does own over 31,000 stores worldwide).

Not to be left out, by 1975 A&W produced their own bottled root beer. They then continued to increase in popularity, rising to number one selling root beer in 1995, before they were bought by Cadbury-Schweppes (the same gents that own Dr. Pepper, and Seven Up) in 1996.

While Barq's and A&W are now available across the country, consumers somehow sidestepped the snare of brand loyalty that invades the heart of every cola lover — “Coke or Pepsi?”

In spite of identical cheeseburgers coast to coast, an untamable yen for diversity may be one of America’s greatest attributes. Fortunately, root beer makers fell severely short of standardizing their flavor. Spicy, frothy, herbal root beer inspired new recipes and experimentation, expanding into hundreds of regional brands.

Thriving off diversity, Philadelphia boasts the highest number of microbreweries in the US. While chiefly beer breweries, some, such as Yard’s, brew root beer as well. Yard’s root beer is served only at Percy Street BBQ on 10th and South Streets. They tart up the sweet, sarsaparilla-type brew as an ice cream float, but ice cream-free pours for purists are available upon request.

Root beer’s quiet but ever present availability stands as a testament to the American spirit’s love of experimentation. Through perseverance, root beer, like Lancaster County corn, home-made jam, and local farmer’s markets, proves that American taste transcends corporations and is a victory that gives credit to the determination of both hippies and housewives.

Want to know even more? Go to rootbeerbarrel.com

Personally tasting each bottle and posting notes on his blog, Anthony has built one of the most extensive root beer websites today.

Just returned from studies in Crete, Erica Hope is a Drexel University student and aspiring food writer. Her work has also appeared in The Triangle.

Article photograph from bloodlessr, via Flickr (Creative Commons), advertisements from myhometownschools and museumsyndicate, “Menu” photograph from Image Source/Getty Images; "Plate" photograph from FoodCollection/Getty Images.