Fannin residents kept alive the memory of the Battle of Coleto Creek, a harsh loss for the Texians that, though less celebrated than the Alamo, helped rally Texian forces a few weeks later at San Jacinto. Marked by Colonel Fannin's missteps, the battle ended in the surrender and execution of his troops. After the entrenchments dug by Fannin's men eroded and disappeared, survivor William L. Hunter returned to the place of surrender and marked it with a pile of rocks. In 1894, landowner Sol Parks placed an iron press screw from a nearby cotton gin at the earlier rock pile, and the next landowner, Hugh B. Hanley, so revered the site that he neither cultivated it nor allowed cattle on it. In 1913, Hanley deeded 10 acres of his land to the state where the Texians under Fannin made their last stand, and the gin screw remained the site's distinctive historical feature for decades.