Grayson County TXGenWeb

Ice Cream Soda

Sunday, March 21, 1993

Denison a fountain of frothy history for ice cream soda

Denison - One former soda jerk to another, Jack Maguire gave me the straight scoop. The ice cream soda was invented in Denison.Mr. Maguire, a chronicler of things Texans, said his hometown was the spot where the frothy diet-buster was created in the late 1800s by Joseph A. Euper.

"He came to Denison in 1875 and opened a small ice cream parlor on West Main. Later he opened a larger emporium just up the street." As a businessman, Joseph A. Euper knew that selling ice cream and soda water could never match the profitability of the neighboring saloons like the White Elephant and the Crystal Palace. He needed a new product.

"Experimenting at his fountain, maybe by accident, he concocted a combination of ice cream, fruit flavoring, and sparkling water. The result was the ice cream soda."

A soda fountain of information, Mr. Maguire is the retired executive boss of the Institute of Texas Cultures in San Antonio. He's well known for his "Talk of Texas" column, which has run in Texas periodicals for three decades.

Talking of bubbly old Joseph A. Euper, he said, "The invention never brought him a lot of money. He closed his shop in 1906 and moved to California to sell real estate. He died there in 1937 at the age of 87.

"After more than a century, his concoction is still so popular that some folks up in Michigan honor him annually with a Joseph A. Euper Day."

Jack Maguire's tales about Texas could fill a book. Indeed, they've filled several, most recently: Texas - Amazing but True (Eakin Press). But the heady story of Joseph A. Euper didn't make the cut.

On April 3, the writer will receive the University of Texas Winedale Foundation's Ima Hogg Award for historical achievement, joining the likes of T.R. Fehrenbach, James, Michener, Lady Bird Johnson and Mr. and Mrs. Ross Perot.

Now a burgher of Fredericksburg in Gillespie County, Mr. Maguire, grayer and maybe wiser than when he left Denison in 1945, returned to his place of origin on the Red River a few days ago for the unveiling of a historical marker.

Denison's a historic spot. Besides birthing the ice cream soda and well-liked Dwight D. Eisenhower, the 21,500 population town claimed the state's first free (graded) public school and the first free rural mail delivery.

Denison boasted the state's second women's civic club. The XXI Club (with membership limited to 21) was organized in 1874, junior only to Victoria County's Bronte Club (1873).Respectable Denison women like XXI members, I guess, finally cleaned up the tough little railroad town. It was a sink. Outlaws and hard cases sported in low dives that counted some of the worst little whorehouses in Texas.

Whipping up ice cream sodas was about the only innocent pastime. As a Grayson County deputy sheriff assigned to Denison, Lee Hall perfected his head-breaking technique. At least 100 men were said to want him dead, but he somehow survived to become a famous Texas Ranger.

Another goal to modify behavior was the annoying proximity of the snooty, do-right citizens of Sherman, the Grayson County courthouse town. Those holy joes looked down their noses at Denison, a town literally labeled "Hell".Denison drew outlaws from the unruly Indian Territory and inherited scumballs from Red River City, a failed railhead on the river.

The budding Sodom was named for railroad exec George Denison, unloved even in his namesake settlement. If he'd ever visited (which he didn't) he'd have seen saloons and brothels lining a skid row called Skiddy Street (named for railroader Francis Skiddy). Today Skiddy has become serene Chestnut Street.

Denison's gentle folk are unabashed by the past. Early railroads brought Mr. Maguire back to his hometown with his wife, Ann, on his arm. The former Ann Roddy, she's a writer and a native of Denison. Jack and Ann were once cubs together at editor Claud Easterly's Denison Herald.

Now 72, Jack Maguire was just 16 when he completed A Short History of Denison, Texas (F.W. Miller Printing Co.). It didn't stay completed. He authored another volume a couple of years ago. No, he didn't call it A Longer History . . . . Aptly, he named it Katy's Baby, a reference to M-K-T Railroad's nickname.

Researching the second volume, he uncovered a Texas-shaking event that had been lost in the locomotive smoke of the past. His classmate, Denison furniture dealer Keith Hubbard, and his life-long friend, Mayor Ben Munson, and other leading citizens were eager to commemorate the lost event.

While Mr. Maguire finished the book and assigned its profits to the Denison Public Library, the others applied for a historical marker and planned a celebration.

To put the thing in perspective, be mindful that Americans long remembered the driving of the golden spike on May 10, 1869, at Promontory Point, Utah.

The ceremony recognized the building of an east-west transcontinental road that joined rails of the Union Pacific to those of the Central Pacific.

Across the U.S.A., bells ran, guns banged, and crowds cheered.

In contrast, everyone promptly forgot the monumentally important linking of rails in Denison that occurred March, 10, 1873.
No one hammered a golden spike as the northbound Houston & Texas Central tracks met those of the southbound Missouri, Kansas and Texas. Yet, significantly, it united the nation - north, south, east and west.

Denison's first mayor, L. S. Owings, a former governor of the Arizona Territory, telegraphed city halls in Galveston, Houston, New York, Boston, Chicago, St. Louis, and San Francisco:"It has remained for Denison to become the great connecting link uniting the south with the east, north, and west. May the union be one of lasting peace and prosperity."

A reporter wrote, "No speeches were made, no poor whiskey was drank."

The reporter surmised that spectators "fully" comprehended the magnitude of the event" as a Texas Central locomotive steamed into the town already established by the Katy.

Today no one can say exactly where the rails met. One old railroad spike looks pretty much like another. Undeterred, Denison VIPs staged their belated golden spike ceremony. With Texas Railroad Commissioner Jim Mugent, they hammered gilded spikes into the roadbed.

A historical marker was unveiled outside the old but magnificently restored Katy Depot, a showplace with dining room, smart shops, and a museum.