Pharmacist Peter Greene and his brother John invested in a mineral spring in The Ouachita Mountains of Hot Springs, Arkansas. They renamed the spring after a nearby township, bottling its waters for distribution throughout the region and, eventually, across the country. And so, Mountain Valley Spring Water sprang to life.

In the early 1900s, the Mountain Valley Hotel in Arkansas’s Hot Springs National Park was the place to be. This stunning, three-story property with its lush gardens and onsite spring — fed by the same pure, crisp waters we still bottle to this day — beckoned wellness seekers from around the world.

In The Roaring Twenties, as Prohibition settled in and bootleggers did all they could to get around it, a new nonalcoholic beverage gained popularity: pale and dry ginger ale. Bartenders needed a powerful soda that could match the potency of illicit moonshine, and beverage companies throughout the country set out to fill that demand — including Mountain Valley. Green, 12-ounce bottles of Mountain Valley “pale dry ginger ale” from 1920 are on display in our Hot Springs Visitors Center.

Our Hot Springs home has attracted some notorious visitors, including the infamous Al Capone. The mobster lived part-time in suite 443 of The Arlington Resort Hotel. The Fort Smith Times Record reported Capone’s suite housed a secret passage to the Ohio Club, Arkansas’s oldest bar. Capone would strike moonshine deals at the club, then
sneak his illegal booze back to Chicago in bottles labeled “Mountain Valley Water.” 

In the early 20th century, pamphlets like this one from 1922 printed by a Cleveland distributor were mailed or handed out to potential customers.

It took much more than leg work to make Mountain Valley Spring Water the first bottled water to be delivered coast to coast in the U.S. It took mule work and wagon work and 55-gallon drums hauled in the beds of Ford Model Ts.

In the 1940s, Mountain Valley Spring
Water was 70 years young. Much has changed since then, but according to this sales brochure from the era, some things haven’t. Our purely sourced Ouachita Mountain spring water remains mineral rich and can still be delivered to your doorstep — home or office. We still proudly call Hot Springs, Arkansas home, and our claims of “delicious to the taste” are now backed up by some serious awards (19, to be exact). Mountain Valley Spring Water has come a long way in our 150 years, but the water at the heart of our business is as naturally refreshing as ever.

Metal signs such as this vintage Mountain Valley Spring Water advertisement were popular in the early to mid 1900s, appearing across the country at roadside gas stations and neighborhood markets.

The Mountain Valley Handicap, later known as the Mountain Valley Stakes, was a longstanding annual tradition at Oaklawn, one of the premiere thoroughbred racetracks in the country since 1904, located in our hometown of Hot Springs, Arkansas. At six furlongs — just under a mile — the horse race took about 1 minute, 10 seconds most years.

This “sell sheet” from the 1980s would have been used by Mountain Valley distributors to spread the good word about our premium water to potential customers.

In the 1990s, as the Kansas City Chiefs topped the NFL’s AFC West Division, Mountain Valley was there. In fact, it was all over this great city. “Today, you will find Mountain Valley Spring Water in Kansas City’s finest homes, offices and restaurants, as well as throughout the Chiefs’ offices and training facilities,” a 1990s ad campaign noted of “The official spring water of the Chiefs.” It concluded: “We’re proud that the Chiefs are carrying on the championship tradition.”