Johnson City Home of Mountain Dew

This is the former site of the Tri-City Beverage Corporation, of which Charles O. Gordon was the owner-president. In 1954 the Tri-City Beverage became one of the first to bottle "Mountain Dew", a clear lemon-lime flavored drink. Four years later Plant Manager Bill Bridgeforth developed a new citrus-lemonade flavored drink called Tri-City Lemonade. In 1960 he placed his citrus-lemonade flavor into the Mountain Dew bottles, which is the flavor in Mountain Dew today. The rights to this formula were obtained by William H. "Bill" Jones of the Tip Corporation of Marion, Virginia, in 1961. Three years later in August 1964, the Mountain Dew brand and production rights were acquired from Tip by the Pepsi-Cola Company, now known as PepsiCo Corporation, at which point distribution expanded across the United States and is the third-biggest refreshment beverage in the U.S. In 2012 the PepsiCo Corporation introduced a new Mountain Dew called "Johnson City Gold" and is the only Pepsi product known to carry the name of a U.S. city.