04. Cotton Ginning in Chandler

After Dr. Chandler’s early success with growing cotton, many new settlers chose to plant cotton. Cotton gins sprang up all over the Salt River Valley. The Chandler Gin, pictured above, was built in 1913, the first of a dozen gins which at one time operated in Chandler.

Cotton production grew exponentially in the 1910s. Farmers in the Salt River Valley planted 200,000 acres of cotton in 1920. In the picture below, row after row of baled cotton waits to be loaded onto freight trains outside the Chandler Gin.