Inn Features Cotton Gin Lobby, Historical Cotton Picker

Inn Features Cotton Gin Lobby Historical Cotton Picker SPECIALTY/SERVICES At the Shack Up Inn in Clarksdale Miss you can stay in a former sharecropping shack/cabin at what was formerly the Hopson Plantation The Inn’s website states that the shacks have been restored “only enough to accommodate 21st-century expectations ” They offer indoor bathrooms heat A/C coffee makers refrigerators and microwaves The original cotton gin now serves as the lobby of the Inn and on most nights hosts live music Sitting and rocking on the front porch of your shack is a big perk of this unique venue An array of agricultural items can be found across the grounds One of the Shack Up Inn owners Bill Talbot shared the story of their most iconic piece—one of the first mechanized cotton pickers At the Hopson Plantation on October 2 1944 in front of 300 onlookers an International Harvester mechanical cotton picker harvested the first cotton crop without hand labor For the first time cotton planting cultivating and harvesting were all done by machine The model H-10-H spindle cotton picker allowed the picker to harvest the cotton boll that holds the actual fiber This invention had been in progress for around 40 years Part of the credit goes to earlier patented ideas that International Harvester purchased and implemented into their machines The pickers were mounted on Farmall H tractors The implementation of the mechanized cotton picker made Hopson Plantation a showplace and educational stop where many came to learn about this new invention in the Mississippi Delta Today you can see a later model of the 1-row cotton picker used on the Hopson Plantation in front of the Shack Up Inn lobby Blues music is intertwined with cotton history The music originated in the cotton fields first with slaves singing spirituals and field hollers then during the sharecropper days These songs eventually morphed into the music we’re familiar with today as the blues and Clarksdale Miss is the heart of that history Several famous blues musicians worked on the plantations One of the tractor drivers at Hopson Plantation was blues pianist Joe Willie “Pinetop” Perkins Today you can stay in Pinetop’s cabin Contact: FARM SHOW Followup The Shack Up Inn 001 Commissary Cir Clarksdale Miss 38614 ph 662-624-8329; www shackupinn com

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