Belton Farmers' Gin Coop - Belton, TX
N 31° 03.295 W 097° 27.796
14R E 646630 N 3436703
A rare example of a surviving brick cotton gin here in Central Texas, the Belton Farmers Gin Co-Op is now a restaurant at 219 S East St, Belton, TX. It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1990.
Waymark Code: WM16D0Y
Location: Texas, United States
Date Posted: 07/04/2022
Views: 5
The building is a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark, and a 2012 Texas Historical Marker provides some background:
The Belton Farmers Co-Op Gin, built in 1927 along Nolan Creek, is a rare example of a surviving brick cotton gin in Central Texas. It was built by an association of local cotton farmers to replace an earlier gin that had burned down on the site in the 1920s. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Belton was the center of cotton processing, commerce, and shipping for Bell County. While most cotton gins built in this region were frame structures with wood or sheet metal cladding, the Belton Farmers Co-Op Gin is made of load-bearing common bond brick walls. The 2-story rectangular building has a sheet-metal hipped roof and a small cupola near the center. After World War II, the gin was closed.
The property's Registration Form (see below) provides some overlap, but it also notes a few additional details, and vacancy is no longer an issue:
The Belton Farmers' Gin Coop (1927) was built by an association of local cotton farmers to replace an earlier gin which apparently burned down in the 1920s. Several earlier cotton processing structures occupied the site, including the Ware and Lee Belton City Mills (1885) which burned down in 1891. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries Bell County was an important cotton-producing area with Belton as its center of cotton processing, commerce and shipping. The Farmers' Coop Gin was only one of as many as four gins operating in and around Belton in the 1920s. This building is a rare example of a brick cotton gin in Central Texas; most cotton gins built in the region were frame structures with wood or sheet metal cladding. The cotton industry in the county collapsed in the 1930s and 1940s, and this building is one of the few surviving examples of the numerous cotton processing businesses which once formed a central part of the town's economy. The gin was closed sometime after World War II and has been vacant for some years. The structure is in fair condition but, unfortunately, most of the processing equipment has been removed.