DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Cotton farmers started pushing into this corner of Briscoe County in 1903 — dry land, big sky, and the kind of stubborn optimism it takes to bet your livelihood on a crop. By 1906, somebody put a shovel in the ground and struck water, and just like that, more farmers came, more acreage went into cotton, and the whole operation started to hum.
There was just one problem. The nearest cotton gin was ten miles away in Turkey. Ten miles.
You load a wagon heavy with cotton in the Texas heat, you bounce it ten miles over rough ground, you gin it, and you bounce it ten miles back. That gets old fast. So three men — M.E.
Tomson, J.H. Clack, and L.A. McCracken — put their heads and their money together.
They bought a gasoline-powered engine, and they built a gin right here at this site. April 1907, the first bale of cotton rolled through. Now here's the part I love.
A cotton gin needs farmers, and farmers need a town, and before long there was one — named, with the kind of practical poetry only small Texas communities can pull off, Gasoline. Named for the engine that made it possible. The town grew up around that gin, lived and breathed alongside it.
But in 1927, the railroad came through the region and bypassed Gasoline entirely. That's the kind of quiet verdict that doesn't need an appeal — towns without rail just slowly lose the argument. Gasoline declined.
And then, in 1938, the gin that had started it all was destroyed in a fire. The engine that built a town, gone. What's left is this marker, and the story of three partners who decided ten miles was just too far to haul a bale of cotton.
What the marker says
Cotton farmers began settling in this area in 1903. A water well was dug in 1906, attracting more farmers and increasing crop production. Because the nearest cotton gin was ten miles away in Turkey, three partners (M.E. Tomson, J.H. Clack, and L.A. McCracken) bought a gasoline-powered engine and built a gin at this site. The first bale of cotton was ginned in April 1907. The presence of the gin led to the development of a town named Gasoline. The town declined after the railroad bypassed it in 1927 and the gin was destroyed in a 1938 fire. (1990)