Cotulla and the Texas Onion
Hightower legacy
Mark Kurlansky writes brilliant books on solitary commodities…like salt and cod and oysters. He has one on onions. In the middle of The Core of An Onion, he offers a casual comment about Cotulla, Texas being the origin of the American onion industry.
In the 1980s, Hightower picked a fight with Georgia and its bogus claims about the superiority of the Vidalia Onion. Hightower asserted that Texas onions were sweeter and that, in fact, the Vidalia Sweet Onion originated from the fields of Texas.
Turns out Kurlansky and Hightower are both correct.
When people talk about Texas and the agricultural sector, they primarily prattle on about cattle, cotton, and corn.
Nobody talks about the onion. They should. The lowly onion is the most valuable vegetable crop in Texas.
Nobody talks about Cotulla, either. They should. Cotulla has an amazing history for such a small town.
Cotulla was on the Chisholm trail.
Old stories of Cotulla had the conductors on the train announce, “Next stop…Cotulla, gets your guns out.” It was pretty lawless, lawless because three sheriffs were gunned down in the streets. It may well have been the inspiration for a number of Western movies.
Cotulla and the onions that were planted in 1898 were ground zero for the Texas Winter Garden economic zone.
And Cotulla was that poverty-stricken school where Lyndon Baines Johnson taught that first year of elementary school. In Cotulla, he experienced first hand the poverty that had such a huge impact of his life. The poverty that enveloped Cotulla was staggering at a time when poverty was the norm.
It made an impact and according to LBJ, was the inspiration for his War on Poverty. “I never thought then, in 1928, that I would be standing here in 1965,” he said in his speech. “It never even occurred to me in my fondest dreams that I might have the chance to help the sons and daughters of those students and to help people like them all over this country. But now I do have that chance, and I’ll let you in on a secret: I mean to use it.”
He returned to Cotulla 38 years later, as president, to honor National Education Week and spoke at the same school where he used to teach.
So keep that in mind while I peel back this origin story of the onion and celebrate an economic boom that wasn’t necessarily uplifting for everyone.
And speaking of booms, Cotulla also lies on the Eagle Ford Shale and fracking is the current money maker for landowners.
But before LBJ, and before the fracking, the onion commercial vegetable market was first pioneered in Cotulla.
According to Kurlansky, in 1616, Governor Daniel Tucker, an Englishman who loved his onions, took seeds to Bermuda and that tropical island proved ideal for growing mild and sweet onions. By 1830 onions were a major Bermuda crop and an important export.
Ahh, but alas for Bermuda, in 1898, Bermuda onion seeds were planted in Cotulla and those onions just loved the South Texas soil.
The railroad system had finally arrived in South Texas and the railroad barons desperately promoted the area as an agricultural Eden in order to get freight to haul. Farmers shrugged, said maybe so, and propped up some windmills and started irrigating Eden…because all Texans know that South Texas is well…kind of dryish… and you just can’t grow vegetables, even in Eden, without some water.
The irrigation worked like a charm.
The farmers in Cotulla planted a couple of irrigated acres of sweet onions and harvested a bumper crop. The railroad happily hauled them to Wisconsin, and them Yankees were delighted beyond belief. “Send more,” they are reputed to have said. So South Texans cleared some cactus, dug some wells in the desert, and sent them poor flavor deprived Yankees tons of onions.
The onions were the harbinger. They were the first commercial vegetable crop in the South Texas Winter Garden area. Other vegetables followed, notably spinach. And the Winter Garden area boomed.
The Bermuda type of onion was sweet. Sweet? Kurlansky says that it is sulfur that causes the crying when onions are cut. The Bermuda was selected to have less sulfur and so was sweeter.
Sadly, the Bermuda had a tendency to bolt and so onion breeders created a new onion based on a Grano onion that was also sweet and a bit more stable.
In 1986, the 1015 onion was produced in the labs of Texas A&M, and became the onion for discerning customers.
But Georgia farmers had previously ordered some Grano onions from South Texas and planted them in Vidalia. Those Georgia farmers thought they had invented sweet onions. They even talked Georgia into naming the Vidalia Onion the state onion. Texans laughed about the Vidalia, a Texas knockoff, was the official state vegetable.
Hightower, always creatively promoting Texas agriculture, went on the trail, trumpeting the Texas sweet onion as far superior to the Vidalia. And The Onion Olympics were on in 1986.
California just barely squeaked ahead of Texas…they must of cheated. And Georgia was a distant third.
So don’t be fooled by the Vidalia onion advertising. It is just a Texas knockoff. Buy local and get the best.