Images Of The Past – Yellowstone And The Falls In Yellowstone Park

The Yellowstone brand of Bourbon was created in 1872 by J.B. Dant to honor the opening of our first National Park. The registered trademark included an image of the Yellowstone Waterfall. When bottling of whiskey became common in the 1890s, the label design for Yellowstone whiskeys also included the waterfall. The image became iconic and was used on their advertising such as the advertising bar tray illustrated here. This design was used in one form or the other until 1972.

In 1972, Glenmore Distillery, who had owned the brand since 1943, decided to update the image of Yellowstone Bourbon. The brand, as was the case with most other whiskey brands, was in decline. The team at Glenmore decided to change the Yellowstone label to replace the waterfall with the geyser “Old Faithful” and use that image and slogan in their advertising. Yellowstone was still very popular in the Louisville Bourbon market, but the sales team at Glenmore wanted to improve sales nationwide. The change was made and it lasted for many years.

Then Stephen Beam enters the picture. Beam had opened the Limestone Branch Distillery and when he partnered with LuxCo, he managed to get a hold of the Yellowstone brand. Stephen Beam is also related to the Dant family who had created the brand and made the possession of the brand part of the deal with Luxco. The brand had passed first to United Distillers when they purchased Glenmore in 1991, and then to LuxCo in 1993 as part of a brand sale by United Distillers.

Beam wanted to do honor to the Yellowstone brand so he had a bottle made that was very similar to the pre-Prohibition bottle design used by J.B. Dant, and had the label redesigned with the Waterfall replacing Old Faithful. The brand had returned to its roots. It is back in the hands of the family that created the brand and the design of the bottle and the label is very close to the original design.