The labels date from the 1900s to the 1950s, offering a taste of a rich brewery history in Salem. But there’s something missing from the collection, donated by Worth Mathewson of Perrydale. There are no bottles representing the earliest known breweries, from around 1870 to 1900.

"We had three breweries in Salem, and nothing’s been found," Mathewson said. "It’s a mystery."

Nothing from breweries owned by Samuel Adolph, Louis Westacott, or Maurice Klinger and Seraphin Beck.

"There’s a bunch of us looking out there," Coburn Grabenhorst Jr. of Salem said. "Like Worth, we wonder why there’s not more out there."

Grabenhorst said he heard a couple of Adolph bottles were found intact 15 to 20 years ago under a downtown sidewalk and each fetched about $8,000.

If a bottle were discovered today, he figures, it would be worth at least that.

Mathewson refers to such a find as the Holy Grail of Northwest breweriana. Even though he isn’t actively collecting, he continues to be on the lookout.

"Every time they tear down something in Salem, I’m there with a handful of business cards," Mathewson said. "I just keep hoping that someday, something will turn up."

Adolph founded the first commercial brewery in town in 1866, according to research by collector Gary Flynn of Bellingham, Wash. It was first called Pacific Brewery, then Salem Brewery. Adolph sold the operation to two employees, Klinger and Beck, in 1885, and they renamed it Capital Brewery.

Those breweries were located where Salem Conference Center and the Phoenix Grand Hotel stand today.

Mathewson said the third brewery of that era, owned by Westacott, was located near the foot of Mission Street SE, about where The Meridian condominium project is being built.

The only collectible Mathewson has heard of regarding Westacott’s brewery is a postcard of a Gervais street scene showing a tavern advertising sign in the background.

He started collecting breweriana about 50 years ago, and had the opportunity in the 1960s to talk with the sons of Adolph and Beck. Neither shed light on the elusive bottles.

One reason the bottles might be so hard to find is that early breweries sold most of their product in kegs. Flynn’s research found that Capital Brewery produced mainly draught beer, but also had a small bottling plant that could bottle three or four barrels in 10 hours.

Grabenhorst has a rare neck label from Capital Brewery dated 1896 — "I’ve never seen another one" — and just recently acquired a corkscrew sheath that has "Capital Brewery & Ice Co." etched on it.

Perhaps more valuable to Grabenhorst is an old photograph he found at a flea market. It features a horse-drawn wagon loaded with kegs of beer and was taken from the docks of Capital Brewery around July 1894.

"It’s the most important brewery photo, bar none, of Salem, Oregon," Grabenhorst said.

Mathewson’s collection on display at the museum in Rickreall includes an old Salem Beer coaster and a bottler opener. Salem Beer was the flagship brand of Capital Brewery and later Salem Brewery Association. But it’s a bottle from the early days that Mathewson and others covet.

"I just hope and hope in some attic somewhere ..."

Capi Lynn