To outsiders, Bear Creek Iced Tea may have looked like just another tea in a carton. But it was Jim Thorpe’s tea in a carton.

Like Zimmerman’s in Lehighton, or Guers in Tamaqua, it was part of the fabric of the town.

“I used to sell $200 a day in orders. People were crazy. I couldn’t sell it in cases, because I couldn’t keep up with it,” said Chingi Patel of Bob’s Market on Sixth Street.

Bear Creek Iced Tea, known to locals as “Creekers,” disappeared from shelves this week.

The iced tea was the last connection to the F.T. Behrens Dairy, later the Behrens’ Brothers’ Bear Creek Dairy, which originally started making milk deliveries using a horse-drawn wagon over 100 years ago.

Josiah Behrens, whose great-grandfather started the dairy, produced and delivered the cases of tea almost as a one-man operation. He said he did it more out of respect for his longtime customers than because they were making big profits.

“I just tried to keep it going for the people who supported us over the years, and looked forward to the product,” he said.

Unfortunately, the machine Behrens uses to make and fill the cartons of iced tea has broken, and there’s no cost-effective way to replace it.

Behrens informed the small delis and shops around Jim Thorpe this week that there would be no more orders of the iced tea. He made the decision after the 40-year-old machine he uses to make and fill the cartons suffered a major breakdown, and no easy fix was available.

Fixing or replacing the machine would require a huge investment, one that he would be unlikely to recoup any time soon.

“When you are a very small operation, and you’re keeping it going for the people who enjoy it, you just can’t justify that,” he said.

He got emotional talking about the support that his business received from the Jim Thorpe community over the years. That support was evident before the recent Jim Thorpe — Tamaqua football game.

The mayors of the two towns placed a friendly wager where the losing mayor had to buy each member of the winning team a carton of their town’s iced tea. Jim Thorpe won, and the Tamaqua mayor had to buy Bear Creek for the team.

“I just feel bad for the people who have supported us, and I know they’re sad about it. I feel like I let people down, but for me it just wouldn’t make a lot of sense,” Behrens said.

The machine, a fold-fill-sort machine made in Illinois, suffered its first major breakdown in about 15 years. Behrens said he searched for an easy fix, but it would basically involve replacing the machine, or paying big bucks for a repairman to travel from Chicago.

“The way this works is, if it isn’t something you can do yourself, or source yourself, this machine was made in Illinois — and if you have to have one of their tech guys come, you pay from the time he leaves his door to the time he goes back to Chicago again,” he said.

Behrens was clearly emotional about his decision, but he was also excited about the opportunities for the future. For years his family has had to schedule their vacations and holidays around his delivery and production schedule. Now, they will have more time as a family.

“I’m a couple days away from 59, so maybe it’s time to do some things I want to do before I leave this earth,” he said.

For Behrens, working at the dairy has been a lifelong job. He started out when the family delivered milk door to door in Jim Thorpe. At that time, his dad ran the dairy operation, and his uncle handled the production facility. In the ’70s, they decided to add juice and tea.

Eventually, the other businesses came to an end, but Behrens kept the iced tea going.

If the business was bigger, perhaps he could justify buying a new machine, but Behrens said he was always happy with the territory he had.

“I was kind of satisfied with the operation I had, I’d like to keep it small — you knew the people you were dealing with,” he said.

Store owners around Jim Thorpe sell plenty of the local tea brands: Zimmerman’s and Guers. And while there are loyal customers for all the local tea brands, Bear Creek was the most popular.

Dharna Patel of Leffler’s Express sold the tea by the case, which worked well for families visiting a loved one outside the area. But individual sales were strong, too.

“We had regulars who were buying a lot at a time, every single day. Going to work and stocking up,” she said.

At Tommy’s Steaks and Subs, they would get deliveries two to three times a week. Employee Laura Simmons said there were customers who would buy them 10 at a time. While she prefers a different brand, Simmons said she could sympathize with Bear Creek drinkers.

“I love Guers. I’m probably addicted to Guers. I can see where they’re coming from,” she said.