ere's how the story goes:
In 1893 at a Cripple Creek brewery, a wandering entrepreneur named Frank J. Wisner was experimenting with carbonated water, roots and sweeteners that did not quite achieve the sweetness he sought. Perhaps a scoop of vanilla ice cream would do the trick.
"And there it was," says historian Linda Wommack. "The root beer float."
The iconic drink was invented here in what was then a bustling mining camp, the center of the Pikes Peak gold rush.
Or so the story goes.
The story has been popularly shared over the years; Wommack, whose great-great uncle sparked the gold rush in 1890, has been far from the only source. Gov. Jared Polis has been known to spread the tale on social media when the calendar hits Aug. 19.
Read his post in 2021: "On this day 128 years ago, the delicious Root Beer Float was invented right here in Colorado by Frank J. Wisner. ... It's reported that he came up with the idea after he realized that the snowy peaks of the mountains looked like ice cream floating in soda."
Specifically, Wisner was inspired by a peak east of town on which he held claims: Cow Mountain. Hence the root beer float nickname: the Black Cow.
Or so the story goes.
Rachael Storm looked into it not long ago. She's History Colorado's curator of business and industry.
"I started digging around," she says, "and I found there's actually no proof of this."
The root beer float's origin story in Cripple Creek is "a lie," Storm says. "I mean, not a lie, but a myth."
Wommack is convinced otherwise.
What was it that made Wisner the one to create the beloved treat? And what made Cripple Creek the place? Wommack has wondered those questions.
"Did circumstances make the man, or did the man make the circumstances?" she asks. "I think it just all came together at the right place at the right time."
At the time, in 1893, Cripple Creek was on its way to booming -- drawing millionaires such as Winfield Scott Stratton and hopeful millionaires such as Wisner. Storm's research led her to Wisner's claims on Cow Mountain, but she could not definitively place him at any brewery.
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"There was a Cripple Creek Bottling Works that was founded in 1893," Storm says. "But they would've been bottling beer then. They would not have been bottling soda."
Soda was found in pharmacies, such as Palace Pharmacy in Cripple Creek. Soda was, indeed, the creation of pharmacists; the carbonated beverage was thought to soothe aches and pains. It was sold by the likes of Robert McKay Green, said to be a vendor at a Philadelphia exhibition in 1874.
Reports surfaced of Green running out of sweet cream for his sodas. He supposedly turned to another vendor selling ice cream. And thus another root beer float invention story emerged that year.
Storm suspects the invention could have come even earlier, though documentation is lacking. But her point is clear regarding Wisner: "Even if his story was true, we have a story that predates him by 20 years in Philadelphia."
We have Census data that places Wisner in Chicago in 1900 and in the decades before his death in 1936. It's not clear to Storm how long Wisner lived in Colorado. A newspaper mentions him having "gone east" from Cripple Creek in 1888.
From what Storm could tell, his mining venture failed.
"People come out, they buy mining claims, they think they're gonna strike gold, they don't strike gold, and they go back wherever they come from," Storm says.
Wisner went back to Chicago, where it appears he sold real estate, Storm found.
She also found a curious letter that was posted online in the early days of the internet. It was signed by Mike Lynn, president of the root beer-making Cripple Creek Cow Mountain Gold Mining Co. based in a suburb of Chicago. Lynn wrote of his great-granduncle.
"And according to his own stories (which were wonderful to hear according to my Dad), uncle Frank came up with a lot of business ideas to support his mining dreams," Lynn wrote. "Cripple Creek in the 1890s was full of over nite millionaires ... and my uncle was going to be the next one come hell or high water."
Lynn continued about Cow Mountain and "one moon-lit nite and the snow capped peak." The view "reminded him of a scoop of ice cream floating on top of 'black cow mountain' and ... well you can imagine the ending."
Those were the storied days of the Wild West, "where you could make something of yourself," Storm says. "I think Frank went back to Chicago -- he had failed -- and he wanted something to bring back from that."
The ending Storm imagines: "He had Cow Mountain, and he was probably sitting with his nieces or nephews or whomever, and they had a Black Cow one day and he said, 'Oh, you know what, I actually invented this.'"
He did, Wommack maintains.
But yes, she has wondered about the man and the circumstances. She has wondered about that view of Cow Mountain -- about that scoop of ice cream he allegedly saw.
"I've tried a couple of times, but I don't know," she says. "I can't see it."