About This Project

This exhibit provides users with a better understanding of the brewing industry in Texas between 1875 and 1935 by using seven Texas breweries - the American Brewing Company, the Houston Ice and Brewing Company, the Galveston Brewing Company, the Spoetzkl Brewery, the Lone Star Brewery, the San Antonio Brewing Association, the Dallas Brewing Company, and the Texas Brewing Company - as case studies. The aforementioned breweries serve as case studies to illustrated how the Texas brewing industry reflects business regulations and social and political reforms during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. Analyzing the methods and procedures the breweries employed in daily business and while combatting Prohibition efforts provides a better understanding of the Texas brewing industry as a whole in the context of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This digital exhibit is the capstone project to accompany a thesis project of the same name produced by Shelby Winthrop DeWitt. Under the supervision of Dr. Perky Beisel, this exhibit and project complete the requirements for a MA in Public History from Stephen F. Austin State University.