After Texas was annexed into the United States in 1846, part of what was once De Leon’s Colony was organized as Calhoun County, giving the county access to valuable cropland and bays, especially modern-day Matagorda Bay. Indian Point, later named Indianola, served the area as a port of entry for many German immigrants who arrived by ship in the mid-nineteenth century until a hurricane destroyed it in 1875. The area was not part of the plantation-based culture of the mid-1800s, and cotton did not become a major crop until the late 1880s, when the Michot brothers, Eugene and Jules, built a cotton gin three miles south of present-day Long Mott. Jules also operated a gin in Port Lavaca along present West Main Street as early as 1895. Calhoun County’s early gins used Robert S. Munger’s continuous system ginning, in which cotton was vacuumed from a loaded wagon, cleaned, and pressed into 500-pound bales. That system remained in use until post-World War Two mechanization allowed farmers to greatly increase cotton yields. Cotton production rose dramatically in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, from five bales reported in 1860 to 10,500 in 1940. In the 1950s, the town’s two existing gins, the Farmers and the Boyd, were moved outside the city. By the early 1970s, however, rising production costs and decreasing cotton prices caused a sharp decline in Calhoun County’s cotton economy. The county’s gins were a key part of its economic infrastructure and also served as community centers for local farmers.