DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, the Colorado River has always had a way of making people dream big — and nowhere did it spark a bigger dream than right here at Marble Falls. The potential of water power on that river is what drew General Adam R.
Johnson, town developer, and the members of the Farmers Alliance together in the 1890s. They had a vision: a cotton mill, built right on this site, powered by the river itself. And they didn't think small.
What they erected for the Marble Falls Cotton and Woolen Company — formed in 1892 — was a two-story stone factory, three hundred feet long and a hundred feet wide. Let that settle in for a moment. Three hundred feet of stone.
That's not a mill, friend, that's a statement. Then came new machinery, run by hydroelectric power, installed by the Marble Falls Textile Mills Company. By the 1920s, this place was turning out woolen goods, surgical gauze, and — here's the one that'll raise an eyebrow — air conditioners.
All of it humming along, powered by the Colorado. But here's where the story turns. In 1964, the factory was gutted by fire.
And in 1971, what the fire didn't finish, the wrecking crews did — the building was razed. All that stone, all that river-powered ambition, gone. What's left now is this site, this marker, and the memory of a place that once made everything from warm wool to cool air, right here on the banks of the Colorado.
What the marker says
The potential of water power on the Colorado River led town developer Gen. Adam R. Johnson and Farmers Alliance members to build a cotton mill on this site in the 1890s. The two-story stone factory, 300 ft. long and 100 ft. wide, was erected for the Marble Falls Cotton and Woolen Co., formed in 1892. New machinery run by hydroelectric power was installed by the Marble Falls Textile Mills Co. In the 1920s, woolen goods, surgical gauze, and air conditioners were made here before the factory was gutted by fire in 1964 and razed in 1971. (1977)