Photos: Forgotten drug stores of Sonoma County

The extensive bottle collection at John C. Burton’s home in the Santa Rosa Junior College neighborhood includes 1916 whiskey bottles labeled “for medicinal purposes,” made in anticipation of Prohibition.

During the 13-year nationwide alcohol ban from 1920 to 1933, patients with a doctor’s prescription could legally obtain their whiskey shots. Drug stores therefore profited not only from drugs during this era, but from alcohol sales, as well.

"There was more alcohol during Prohibition than there was prior or after for a while," said Burton, local historian and co-author of “Sonoma County Druggists: Featuring Advertising, Bottles, Medicine Glasses, Photographs, and Local History.”

From the 1850s to the 1950s, drug stores in Sonoma County were smaller, locally owned businesses — a stark contrast to our time, when the majority of drug stores are mass-market chains. Drug stores were also a gathering spot during the first half of the 20th century, when many stores had a soda fountain counter for children and adults.

A few local drug stores were also the hot spot where towns got their first phones installed in the early 1900s.

"That was a huge draw, a commercial store that had a telephone. Of course, everyone could listen in because there was no telephone booth, as it developed into, at the time. Everyone could start a rumor off of your phone call," Burton said.

Drug stores became more legitimate following the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, which required drug products be accurately labeled.

“Sonoma County Druggists,” Burton’s 348-page book co-written with Frank A. Sternad, includes entries on about 150 former local druggists. Downtown Santa Rosa there were several established drug stores, including the Hahman Drug Company, Farmer's Drug and Economy Drug Store.

A 1940 ad for Bacci Drug Store on Mendocino Avenue at Fifth Street in Santa Rosa said its soda fountain counter offered sandwiches, soups, salads, coffee, milkshakes and free ice cream cones for kids.

One entry in the book is Elizabeth “Lizzie” McGaughey Bennett, a pharmacist who owned her own businesses in Santa Rosa, Sebastopol, San Francisco and Oroville.

In 1895 Bennett was featured in the San Francisco Call newspaper for a profile of women pharmacists. While the pharmaceutical “business demands long hours, close confinement, much drudgery and constant study” Bennett told the paper she hoped “to see the time when every first-class pharmacy will employ at least one woman prescription clerk.”

By the 1950s, larger drug store chains began to form. Today the majority of pharmacies in the U.S. are “retail chains, supermarkets, or mass retailers,” according to the Commonwealth Fund, a national nonprofit that researches health care issues.

See the gallery above for photos of Sonoma County drug stores from the 1870s to the 1950s.