Robert Earl Karper - Lubbock, TX
Posted by: 
WalksfarTX
N 33° 35.110 W 101° 49.795
14S E 237358 N 3719750
A grove of Chinese Elm Trees in MacKenzie Park is named "Karper Grover" after him.
Waymark Code: WM1367C
Location: Texas, United States
Date Posted: 09/25/2020
Views: 0
Plaque Text:
KARPER GROVE
The first large grove of Chinese Elm in this country. This valuable shade tree first introduced and widely distributed in Texas in 1919 by R.E. Karper while superintendent of Lubbock Experiment Station.
Texas State Historical Assoc
"KARPER, ROBERT EARL (1888–1965).Robert Earl Karper, agriculturalist, was born near Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, on October 9, 1888, the son of William Edward and Della Emma (Laughlin) Karper. He graduated from Kansas State College in 1914 with a B.S. degree in agronomy. In 1914–15 he taught and conducted research in agronomy at Oklahoma A&M College. On March 8, 1915, he married Sophia Grace Dickinson; they had two sons.
Karper was appointed superintendent of the Texas Agricultural and Mechanical College Experiment Station at Lubbock in 1915. Largely as a result of station research, improved grain sorghum varieties became an important money crop on the Texas South Plains (see SORGHUM CULTURE). Karper was made assistant director of the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station System in 1925 (see AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION SYSTEM). In 1928 he received an M.S. degree from Texas A&M and was appointed the school's vice director and agronomist in charge of sorghum investigations. At his own request he returned to the Lubbock experiment station in 1940 to devote full time to sorghum research. During World War II, when shipments of tapioca from the Orient were interrupted, Karper worked successfully with the General Foods Corporation to develop a waxy sorghum starch substitute for it. Under his influence the Lubbock Experiment Station introduced the Arizona cypress and Chinese elm to the Lubbock area; a grove of trees in Mackenzie State Park was named for him."