When the ground shakes and the skies roar, the people of Burton know exactly what day it is. The town revs up the massive internal combustion engine that powers its antique cotton gin for the annual Burton Cotton Gin Festival. The 16-ton “Lady B” — an internal combustion engine that has been operating since 1925 — inside of Burton’s restored cotton gin is the main attraction. Every year, hundreds of people come to celebrate and relive this significant part of the town’s history. If you aren’t at the festival, you’re on your way there.
This year, the 32nd Annual Burton Cotton Gin Festival will be taking place on Saturday, April 17 from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
“This is a full-blown small town Texas festival,” says Tynan Shadle, the Texas Cotton Gin Museum’s program coordinator. The day-long celebration starts off with a downtown parade of antique tractors, horses, vintage cars, a marching band, and floats. People of all ages can compete in pie-eating, seed-pulling, and bubble gum-blowing competitions or grab a bite from the food trucks and shop along Main Street. There’ll be a classic car show, antique tractors and engines on display, food trucks, arts and crafts vendors, and folk-life demonstrations by blacksmiths, sauerkraut makers, butter churner, spoon carver, and a spinner and weaver will turn cotton into thread. The beer tent next to the Roy Winkler Family Pavilion is the festival’s central point. “That is where the live music and contests take place,” Shadle says.
The Burton Farmers Gin
“This is one of the two days out of the year that we run this gin,” Shadle says. “The gin is run on festival day but also a few weeks before festival as a test run. The Texas Cotton Ginners Association and ginners from around the state come before the festival to run maintenance on the gin.” They will give tours during the festival and provide first-hand insights.
“It’s a fun day where we get to talk a lot about Texas history, but it is also our largest fundraiser,” Shadle says. The event aims to keep the legacy and history of cotton alive in Burton through the preservation of the 1914 Burton Farmers Gin — the last of the town’s three gins. The city was founded 46 years earlier, the same time as the Houston Central Railroad was constructed. This railroad connected Burton to Houston and to Austin. “This was the lifeline for shipping bales of cotton back to Houston which were then shipped to textile mills all over the world,” Shadle says.
In the 1940s, the gin was the only one still working in the community. “At least until the late 1960s, cotton was a very large part of Burton's economy,” Shadle says. In 1974, the gin shut down due to insufficient cotton growth in the area. It sat dormant until 1986. Remarkably after 12 years, the gin was still intact, which is rare as gins are usually torn down and stripped for parts after they close. “This is what made the gin significant enough to the people of Burton to save the gin, restore it to working condition, and turn it into a museum,” Shadle says. “The gin was such a large part of this community and was worth saving.”
Festival-goers can get an up-close look as the cotton runs through saw blades and the seeds separate from fibers. “We will gin a couple of bails for people to be able to see and experience that,” Shadle says. “Cotton comes out of the field as seed cotton,” he explains. “This means the lint and the seed are together as one. The cotton gin separates the two, leaving you with seed and lint. The lint is gathered into a chamber and compressed and wrapped to make a bale of lint. The lint is pressed into a bale so that it can be shipped to the textile mill to be made into clothing. It would not be possible to ship the lint efficiently if it were loose.”
The Burton Farmers Gin turns 107 this year, and the Bessemer engine is turning 96. “We have a very dedicated group of engine volunteers who are in charge of running the engine that powers the cotton gin,” he says. “It is just as cool as the gin itself.”
