Lake Tahoe | Mountain Dude!

The name for Mountain Dew was originally suggested by Carl E Retzke at an O-I meeting in Toledo, Ohioand was first trademarked by Ally and Barney Hartman in the 1940s, who coined the name from acolloquial term for moonshine whiskey. Early bottles and signage carried the reference forward by showing a cartoon-stylized mountaineer. The first sketches of the original Mountain Dew bottle labels were devised in 1948 by John Brichetto, and the representation on product packaging has changed at multiple points in the history of the beverage.

PepsiCo (known then as The Pepsi-Cola Company) acquired the Mountain Dew brand in 1964, and shortly thereafter in 1973 the logo was modified as the company sought to shift its focus to a “younger, outdoorsy” generation. 

Mountain Dew was originally Southern and/or Irish slang for moonshine (homemade whiskey), or poitín as it is called in Ireland. An 1882 song from Ireland "The Rare Old Mountain Dew" (Words by Edward Harrigan. Music by Dave Braham) begins:

Let grasses grow and waters flow

In a free and easy way,

But give me enough of the rare ould stuff,

That's made near Galway Bay,

Come gougers all from Donegal, Sligo and Leitrim too,

And we'll give them the slip and we'll take a sip,

Of the rare ould Mountain Dew.

A 1947 version by Grandpa Jones (1913–1998) may be better-known to Americans:

There's a big holler tree down the road here from me

where you lay down a doller er two.

When you come round the bend and when you come back again

there's a jug full of good old Mountain Dew

Oh they call it that old mountain dew and them that refuse it are few.

I'll shut up my mug if you fill up my jug with some good old Mountain Dew.