Cisco Press

6/23/2023

Public Announcement:

The Dallas Morning News, July 19, 1888, printed “Cisco as a Shipping Point.” The article is quoted here: Cisco, Tex., July 17---Cisco manufactures soda water and sends it to all points of the compass, also ships ice in every direction. Cisco has a soap factory in full blast. Cisco has one of the finest roller mills in Texas that is now crowded to its utmost capacity and will soon be running both night and day. A candy factory will be started here the first of August. Mr. C. M. Pilcher, a produce man here, informed the News man a day or two ago that he had from sixty to seventy customers to whom he shipped goods regularly, some of them as far west on the Texas and Pacific road as Sierra Blanco. Every wholesale business that has ever been started in Cisco has prospered from the beginning and the great wonder is that some moneyed firm does not put a wholesale grocery house here. Cisco has the same freight rates from the eastern markets that Fort Worth and Dallas have. A wholesale grocery house in Cisco would have one of the largest territories in Texas.” (research from J. C. McDaniel) Two things need to be added to this article. Number one is that Isaac Simmons began his Soda Water Business in Cisco in 1885. He was on the cutting edge of this business because Dr. Pepper began in 1885 in Waco, Texas, and Coca Cola began in 1886 in Atlanta, Georgia. The Lela Latch Lloyd Museum in Cisco has one of Isaac Simmons’ soda water bottles which was dug up in Toyah, Texas, four years ago and which was sold to Dan Griffith’s Antique Shop in Cisco by the mayor of Toyah, and he sold it to the Lela Lloyd Museum. Number two is that West Texas Produce was later opened in Cisco and ran fresh produce with its trucks that had been filled by trains coming to Cisco to Brownwood and Abilene and many other nearby towns.