Nevada’s past through antique drugstore vials
By John Przybys, Las Vegas Review-Journal
They’re not just bottles. They’re mirrors that reflect Nevada during a different time, prisms that break up the sunlight of modern-day Nevada into the earthier colors of the state’s mining tradition.
But, yeah, some of them look pretty cool, too.
Drugstore bottles from long-ago Nevada towns have been a passion of Fred N. Holabird’s since his college days at Humboldt State University in California. In his second book, “Ghost Towns & Medicines: The Nevada Bottle Book Volume II — Drug Store Bottles” (Sierra Nevada Press, $42), Holabird, a Reno mining geologist, shares his love of antique bottles, not just as collectibles but as historical relics.
Holabird’s first volume dealt with embossed soda, whiskey, beer and dairy bottles. This time, he focuses on the bottles both fancy and utilitarian that Silver State druggists used in providing medical care to miners and pioneers.
