Cotton Production in Runnels County

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about cotton production in Runnels County, out here where the land itself remembers. Now, cast your mind back to 1884. Most of Runnels County was open range, cattle country, the kind of place where you'd sooner expect a longhorn than a cotton boll.

But a man named R.F. Counts had an idea. Born in 1838, and gone by 1892, he didn't have a whole lot of years to make his mark on this land.

What he did have was nerve. He planted an experimental cotton field right near this very site, in country that nobody had really tried for cotton before. And it worked.

His success, as it tends to do, got the neighbors talking. Other area farmers took a long look at what Counts had done and decided they wanted in. By 1888, those farmers together raised 88 bales.

That's not a number that'll knock you off your boots by itself, but consider where it started. One man. One experimental field.

Just a few years before. Now, you needed a gin to process that cotton, and Runnels County was going to make do with what it had. The first cotton gin in the nearby town of Content was a converted corn and flour mill.

Somebody looked at what was already standing and said, well, that'll do. Then around 1897, C.W. Miller and C.E.

Woodrow went ahead and built a proper new gin, about a mile northeast of here. The county kept growing into cotton. More farms, more acres, more gins.

By the time the county hit its stride, it had about 40 gins running to keep up with the harvest. And the harvest. In 1932, Runnels County brought in a peak of 78,172 bales.

Seventy-eight thousand, one hundred and seventy-two bales. Cotton had boosted property values across the area, changed what this land was worth, changed what it meant to own a piece of it. All of it traces back to one experimental field, one man willing to try something that hadn't been tried out here before.

Cotton remains a principal crop in Runnels County to this day. R.F. Counts didn't live to see the full of what he started, but the land kept right on growing it.

What the marker 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.