Cotton remade Taylor County before oil took hold

In 1880, Taylor County counted more than 30,000 cattle. The census listed 157 acres of wheat and 73 acres of corn. The railroad reached the county in 1881, linking farms and ranches to larger markets. Cotton covered 4,000 acres by 1890, 28,000 by 1900, and more than 101,000 by 1910. In one generation, cotton patches spread across land that had been open-range country.

The boom came with a fragile base. Of the county's 2,404 farms in 1910, 1,351 were worked by tenants rather than owners. Drought cut cotton acreage to 17,000 by 1920. A strong rebound pushed it past 150,000 acres in 1929, but the Great Depression broke many farms. By 1940, cotton had fallen to 58,000 acres, and almost one-third of the county's tenant farmers had been pushed out.

Oil was found in Taylor County in 1929, but it did not become a major part of the economy right away. Production rose from about 26,000 barrels in 1938 to 403,000 in 1944, bringing more oilfield supply and service companies. Ranching and farming remained, while petroleum added another line of work. Taylor County's economic story is not a clean swap from cattle to cotton to oil; each new layer grew over what was already here.