Cotton Production in Runnels County

The Handbook of Texas says the county ginned just 677 bales in 1890, more than 15,000 in 1900 and 23,126 in 1910, as farmers, many of them German and Czech immigrants, overtook stock raisers. In May 1915 the county was flush with an unprecedented crop of 58,000 bales. Then only fourteen inches of rain fell in 1916 and less than eleven in 1917, and in 1918 the whole county ginned 2,500 bales. Farmers who had borrowed to plant lost their land, and the population fell from 21,000 in 1910 to 17,000 in 1920.

What the plaque says

In 1884, when most of Runnels County was range for livestock, R.F. Counts (1838-1892) planted an experimental cotton field near this site. His success encouraged other area farmers, who raised 88 bales in 1888. First cotton gin in the nearby town of Content was a converted corn and flour mill. C.W. Miller and C.E. Woodrow built a new gin (1 mile northeast) about 1897. The county had about 40 gins to process its peak harvest of 78,172 bales in 1932. Cotton boosted property values in this area and remains a principal crop. (1976)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Z. I. Hale Museum and Rock Hotel — 14 mi
  A free museum in a Winters optometrist's office, a 1909 railroad hotel and a 1927 implement dealership, with Rogers Hornsby's hometown memorabilia and a 1912 horse-drawn cotton picker.
• Abilene State Park — 16 mi
  A pecan-shaded park on Elm Creek in the Callahan Divide south of Abilene, with red sandstone CCC buildings, a summer pool, a bird blind and yurts under the trees.
• Buffalo Gap Historic Village — 18 mi
  The 1880 stone courthouse and jail of the county seat Abilene took away, with about twenty old buildings from around West Texas gathered around it since 1956.
• Carnegie Library of Ballinger — 24 mi
  A 1909 limestone library with an Ionic portico in a railroad town the Santa Fe created in 1886, one of the few Texas Carnegie libraries still working in its original building.

More markers nearby

• Ranger Peak — steps away
• Ranger Campsite — steps away
• Old Townsite of Content — 0.9 mi
• Atoka Cemetery — 5.5 mi