CottonDale

 Was reading through Legends and Lore of Southern Illinois and found, from the mid 1860s through the late 1870s, Carbondale was the center of cotton production in Illinois  and one of the top cotton producing locations in the country. This was due to a combination of factors. During the Civil War, Southern cotton production was devastated so Illinois bottomland along the Mississippi was put into cotton production to replace it. Carbondale, as the nearest railroad hub, found itself the  shipping point for raw cotton produced in the region, with a number of cotton gins and balers built in the city. The shipment of baled cotton to mills in the east from Carbondale skyrocketed

As the South recovered and its cotton production revived, the demand for Illinois cotton declined with the last gins dismantled by 1880.