Cotton Gin RV Park, Goodlett,TX

We arrived at the Cotton Gin RV Park in Goodlett, TX right at sundown, Friday January 16.  (I hate setting up the RV in the dark, especially in the cold and wind!)  The office was closed, but we were told in a telephone call just to pick a spot and visit the office in the morning.  Goodlett is between Vernon and Childress, Texas - out on the flat plains where the wind always blows!

We got setup quickly, had a bite of dinner, and it was bedtime!  I have to admit, we did sleep in a little on Saturday morning!  After walking dogs, breakfast, and a little "get ready" time, we headed over to the office when it opened around 10am.

The history of the gin is very interesting.  A local lady, after raising her 4 children, went back to Texas Tech and earned her PhD in agriculture.  She developed a very successful strain of cotton . . . just an amazing story.  She is 91 and has some health issues - but still lives by herself somewhere north of Goodlett.  She bought the cotton gin some 15 years ago with the understanding to keep the gin building.  Her vision was a RV park, and she has done very well!  This is really the only nice RV park between Wichita Falls and Amarillo!  Besides converting the area around the gin to an RV park, she removed most of the machinery and converted the inside of the gin to a meeting area.  Unfortunately, with her health issues, the kids are now "remotely" running the RV park and will soon have it for sale.  I hope someone with her same vision will buy it!

The inside of the gin rewarded us with some interesting antiques.  This gin was one of the few in the area to have two lint pickers in series - to removing as much cotton lint from the seed as possible.  Next to the huge lint picker was a late 1800s or early 1900s Whitney cotton gin!

Off to the side, we saw an original "ice box".  For the younger crowd, before the day of refrigeration, a well to do house would have a wood insulated case with a spot to load a block of ice.  This particular ice box actually had a porcelain inside!  Fancy!

Next to the ice box was an item that took me back to my youth - a dry sink.  A dry sink was a type of pantry.  The one I remember had a bin for flour with a sifter at the bottom of that bin, so one could sift flour directly into a bowl for preparing meals for the farm hands.  This dry sink did not have a flour bin, but it was very neat and sparked many memories.

We paid for our night's stay, hooked up, and hit the road to Amarillo!