On January 7, 1859, gold was discovered at Chicago Creek in the territory of Colorado. This marked the beginning of the world-famous stampede of fortune seekers from every portion of the world with the appetite of wealth. During the next 20 years, discovery after discovery of gold found in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado forged new communities settlers would eventually call home.

If gold was not discovered along Cherry Creek within the present day city of Denver, the City may never have produced some greatest breweries such as Adolph Coors, Tivoli, Neef Brothers and especially, Philip Zang.

The Phil Zang Brewing Company was Colorado's first brewery and most of all, the largest beer producer between St. Louis, Missouri and the West Coast since the late 1880s to Prohibition. The City of Denver was named for General J.W. Denver, who was appointed Governor of Kansas in 1857. General Denver was a native Virginian, and a lawyer by profession, acquiring his military title through service in the war with Mexico.

As the miners finish a day of digging for gold in the mountains west and south of Denver, Colorado, a mug of their favorite beer was needed to enjoy their evening. Breweries established during early Colorado were small. At first, kitchen-style home-breweries where set up in gold mining camps to take care of beer demands. This consisted of brewing beer in large pans over a woodfire stove. Eventually, brewing operations were moved to either the second story of a small building, or a "shed" type structure to house what was called a "brewery". By the 1880s, Virtually every mining town in Colorado had its own small brewery. Naturally, the output of these operations was limited, most were less than 100 barrels per year. With exemptions, all these small breweries greatly exaggerated their output, although it was the larger, more productive breweries such as Coors, Neef Brothers, Walters, and Zang's provided the bulk of beer for Colorado.

Starting Colorado's First Brewery

The Rocky Mountain Brewery was Colorado's first brewery. On November 10, 1859, while the town of Denver, Colorado, was still a mining camp, the small brewery was built by Fred Solomon and Charles Tascher and opened for business. It was housed by a one-story, wooden building, located at the foot of 7th Street and Platte River, in Highlands (North Denver). At first, the brewery was called the Solomon, Tascher & Co. and was changed to the Rocky Mountain Brewery in 1860.

Fred Solomon had plans to expand the brewery and invited Jim Endlich and John Good to join him in a partnership during April 1860. During the fall of 1860, Charles Tascher sold his share in the brewery to John Good and Jim Endlich and joined his brother Jacob, in Central City. By the end of 1861, the company was known as Endlich & Good but kept the Rocky Mountain Brewery name.

After several years of hard work the brewery was placed upon a prosperous basis, and reached an annual output of 500 barrels by 1862. It seems that the early product of the brewery satisfied the Colorado pioneers and its business increased with the development of Denver and the adjacent territories. In 1862, Fred Solomon opened a General Merchandise store at 15th and Blake and by 1865, John Good was sole owner of the Rocky Mountain Brewery.

John Good

John Good was born in Alsace-Lorraine in 1835. He heard of great opportunities overseas and immigrated to America in 1858 to start up a general store. He arrived in Denver in 1859 with three ox teams loaded with merchandise and opened one of Denver's first general stores.

Denver's newly built general store kept up with the demand for miner's supplies. Several months later John Good was considering investing into a brewing business and took a short break from his general store. While Good was absent, his manager pocketed all the store's cash and fled town. In 1860, Good sold the general store to raise money to invest in the Rocky Mountain Brewery. From his youth experience while growing up in Germany, he furnished seed to the farmers of Colorado and showed them how to cultivate barley.

Not only did John Good invest in the brewery, he was also a major investor in mining, banking, railroads and real estate. He built the Good Block at 16th and Larimer Streets in 1868. The city directory listed his occupation as a Capitalist, at Office #23, Good Block. He was a prominent citizen and resident of Denver for nearly 60 years, accumulating a very large fortune. He was very civic minded and was twice City Treasurer of Denver.

Philip Zang Enters the Brewing Business

In 1870, John Good hired Philip Zang to manage the brewery. Zang had many years of experience in the brewing business and helped Good's brewery to become the largest brewery in Colorado within the next ten years.

Philip Zang was born near Aschaffenburg, Bavaria, Germany on February 15, 1826, before coming to America in 1852. He settled in Louisville Kentucky to start a brewing business in that city that would last for 16 years.

By 1859, Philip Zang's small brewery outgrew its capacity and built the Phoenix Brewery in 1861. Even thought the Civil War cause many problems for the Phoenix Brewery, the brewery continued to grow and became the largest brewery in Kentucky by 1869. During that year the Phoenix brewery was purchased by Vogt and Schillinger. In 1869 Peter Weber, of Madison, Indiana, purchased an interest, and the brewery became Weber & Schillinger. In 1882, Mr. Weber bought out Schillinger, and in the following year he became the sole proprietor and President until his death in 1891. In 1901, the Phoenix Brewing Company became a branch of the Central Consumers Company, which operates several of the principal Louisville breweries. Central Consumers Company closed the plant in 1916.

Good Meets Zang

While living in Louisville, Kentucky, the news of Gold in the Rocky Mountains caught Philip Zang's attention. After Zang sold the Phoenix Brewery to Vogt and Schillinger, he arrived in Denver, Colorado on September 5, 1869. After prospecting near Leadville, he went back to Denver for the winter. While John Good was investing in the mining business , he needed a manager for the Rocky Mountain Brewery. John Good met Philip Zang in Leadville and offered Zang the plant manager position and accepted it.

By 1870, Philip Zang, increased the brewery's annual output to 2,000 barrels. Zang purchased the brewery from John Good in 1871 and made plans to increase its capacity to over 20,000 barrels by the end of 1880. John Good and another partner named Jacob Mack would later set up three other breweries in Colorado:

John Good passed away on November 24, 1918 at the age of 83.

The next 10 years were challenging for Philip Zang and the Rocky Mountain Brewery. At 4 am on September 30, 1875, the brewery suffered a fire in the amount of $12,000 damage. Cause of the fire was unknown, and the brewery was rebuilt.

The water used in Zang's beer was taken from the Platte River. In 1880, just south of what is now the Mile High Stadium, a man hit artesian water while drilling for coal. The Rocky Mountain Brewery was not far from the site and Zang drilled a well which soon supplied a large supply of artesian water. Zang advertised his beer as "...made from artesian water." Later that year, Frederic Sigel and Louis Mack were taken into the brewery, changing the brewery's name to the Phil Zang Brewing Company.

In 1881, the Phil Zang Brewing Company had another fire that resulted in total loss. Zang also rebuilt the brewery. This time, the new brewery consisted of three stories, and all brick construction.

Even the all-brick brewery had its problems. The flood of the Platte River, on June 12, 1882, caused heavy water damage to the brewery. All of the disastrous events from the last ten years could not stop Philip Zang from completing his goal and produced 20,000 barrels of beer in 1882. The next year, production jumped to 50,000 barrels.

Philip Zang added a fourth story brew house, a new wing to the aging buildings and a basement to the brewery in 1885. New buildings were built for the brewery, artificial, ammonia-based refrigeration was added with the installation of two ice machines. The ice making experiment was successful that the refrigerating plant was enlarged several years later.

The next year, production jumped to 65,000 barrels. By 1887, the Phil Zang Brewing Company became the largest in volume between St. Louis and the West Coast. Zang's beer was available throughout Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico and Nebraska. Two bottling agents were set up by Zang Brewing Company. George Stumpf in Pueblo was a bottling agent for Zang in 1874 and 1875 and the Telluride Bottling Works in Telluride was a bottling agent for Zang in 1899-1915.

In 1888 after Zang met his goals, he decided to sell the brewery to an English Company known as the Denver United Breweries, Ltd. This company also purchased the Denver Brewing Company, located at 9th and Lawrence Streets. Denver United Breweries, Ltd. closed the Denver Brewing plant in 1895. Philip Zang retired from the brewing business in 1889, and his son, Adolph J. Zang, took over as general manager of both Philip Zang and Denver Brewing Companies.

By 1889, Philip Zang was listed as one of the 33 millionaires residing in Denver. Zang owned 3600 acres north of Denver, where he raised horses. He ranch was called the "Elmwood Stock farm," located at Zang's Spur. In 1887, the town's name was changed to Broomfield.

Philip Zang was active in social and other business ventures. He helped lay out the town of Goldfield, near Cripple Creek with the help of Fred Sigel and General Sturm and helped build the railroad of the Mexico Cuernavaca and Pacific from the city of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean. Zang was the first President of the railroad. Philip Zang died on February 15, 1899 and was buried at Riverside.

The Phil Zang Brewing Company enjoyed the next 20 years of prosperity and increased production. by the end of the century, Zang was producing over 150,000 barrels of lager beer each year.

From 1892 through 1908, Zang's beer was bottled by the C.A. Lammers Bottling Company. Most Zang's beer was bottled in bottles bearing Lammer's name, although some embossed Zang's bottles were used. The ones embossed with the Zang's name are very scarce.

Strong temperance movements was developing in Colorado as early as 1910. Adolph Zang believed Prohibition was inevitable and hastily sold his brewery stock. In 1911, the English Company, in a spot check of the brewery, found that Adolph Zang had sold all of his brewery stock in 1910 and asked Adolph to retire. On January 1, 1912 Adolph announced his retirement and a representative of the English Company succeeded him as manager. The Zang name stayed with the brewery, for which the Zang family received a large sum of money.

In 1913, 1914 and 1915, George Kaub was the business manager, Dan Fuelscher, head of sales and C.A. Lammers, manager of the bottling department. In the November election of 1914, the State of Colorado voted Prohibition in, and to take effect on midnight, December 31, 1915. All beer on hand at the brewery, at that time, was dumped in the city sewer.

In 1916, Zang's Snappy and Zang's Wuerzberger (near beer) was manufactured for the brewery to stay in business. In 1917, Zang's ice cream was also added. B.R. Pfretzcher took over as general manager in 1921. By 1923, they also listed cereal and ice for sale.

The demand for Zang's Snappy and Zang's Wuerzberger near beers and later, Bravo, did not materialize and the brewery declined rapidly. The ice cream business had some success but nothing compared to the great brewing business during pre-Prohibition years.

When Repeal finally arrived in 1933, an attempt was made to refit the brewery but the owners made a final decision to sell off the property instead.

Today, most of Zang's brewery buildings in Denver have been razed. The only two remnants of the great Zang's brewing industry are two building. The brewmasters home is now used as an office building and the Hostel building for drivers is now a sports bar calling itself "Zang Brewing Company." The carriage and storage house was used as a furniture store until it was demolished in 1985.

The founders of the Philip Zang Brewing Company once established the oldest brewing company in Colorado. Zang's brewing enterprise may be considered a small business compared to the brewing empires shared by Anheuser-Busch and Adolph Coors in Colorado; but Zang's heydays between 1880 and 1915 was extremely impressive by its historical standards. Today, memorabilia from Zang's brewery have become popular among Colorado collectors through its creative advertising and historical background. Collectors continue to preserve Zang's history by adding its breweriana to their collections.