Waching daily Sep 6 2017

DOUG: You know, a lot of people ask why did you have a monument made to honor a pest?

Well, basically what it does is to remind us in this area of Alabama what the boll

weevil caused. Dr. Smith: There's things that you've got to see

with your own eyes in order to believe it and the boll weevil

devastation was one of them. It's a very small insect, loves to feed on cotton.

Was not a native of this country but managed to find its way here back in 1892.

Gradually they made their way throughout the Cotton Belt,

particularly the eastern part of the cotton belt, in the early nineteen

hundred's. Cotton was the only cash crop with the farmers from Texas to Georgia.

In 1916 there was a Mr. Sessions who was dealing on a low scale with peanuts

and he made a trip to North Carolina and Virginia and observed them growing

peanuts. Asked a lot of questions and he bought some seed peanuts and had them

shipped back to Enterprise. So when they came back they tried to sell the idea of

peanuts and that really didn't go over very well. But one farmer was indebted

to the banker and he didn't have any choice. The banker told him he needed

to plant peanuts. Well lo and behold he had a tremendous year. He did so well

that they could hardly get enough peanuts seed for the farmers next year.

Everybody wanted part of the act.

And that really brought in a second cash crop and peanuts dominated being the only

cash crop in this part of the country for years and years and very little

cotton was grown.

And that was the time then that one of the merchants he

decided they need to build a monument. There was a Mr. Bond Fleming who was a

local councilman and had also served as a county commissioner and the ideal

occurred to Mr. Fleming that something ought to be done as a reminder of what

the boll weevil had done to the economy of Coffee County. So a statue was his

idea. It's been there ever since except a

couple of times it's had some vandalism. But we have a lot of people coming

through our town just to see it to take pictures of it.