The Bottle Shop - Main Street, Jackson

Logan stopped by the Bottle Shop in Jackson (August, 1975), Reader, borrowed a flashlight from the proprietress, and headed downstairs.

Weeks before, the building's owner, (the late) John Perkovich, had shown the writer a brick wall and cornerstone there. The part of the stone not hidden by the stairs contained a Masonic symbol and a date, 1854.

With the flashlight, Logan could peer behind the stringer of the stair to see if anything else was inscribed. There was, and he read: "M. Brumel & Co."

To the reader, the name most likely means nothing; to this antiquarian, it is a familiar name in Jackson town annals. Brumel was a merchant and at one time had an interest in businesses both sides of Main. The early annals of used to be the Kountry Kasuals and the Bottle Shop, making up what the county assessor identifies as "lot 13, block 10," may be of interest. The lot fronts 45 feet on Main.

In 1872, when the federal government, through the county judge, issued patent deeds to owners of town lots, the lot was the same width. Upon it were Edward Muldoon's "two tenements."

The Kountry Kasuals side has new construction, but remnants of those two tenements have survived through the years.

Even Earlier, where the clothing store once was, was the restaurant portion of the pioneer hotel de France. That hostelry's saloon stood where Sprouse Reitz was.

Notice the iron doors and bars on the windows

Where the Bottle Shop is now was once Frank Scott's fruit store which dates prior to 1854. In March that year Joseph and Julia Godfrey sold the hotel's restaurant "together with a small store adjoining now occupied as a fruit store" to J. Baum and Bromel for $2,100.

The two frame store houses fronted on Main about 48 feet. Today's lot, incidentally, two fires, several owners and 121 years later, measures 45.

One gets the impression that the ex-hotel half was substantial enough and the fruit store part less so. Regardless, we read in the December 30, 1854 Amador Sentinel:

Information, photographs courtesy of the Amador County Archives, The Historical Marker Database, The Chronicling America Database, and Larry Cenotto, Amador County's Historian