Midway

Midway is on Farm Road 958 and Lavaca County roads 326 and 332, halfway between Shiner and Yoakum in southwestern Lavaca County. In March 1838 J. Branton Johnson of Austin County received a certificate for a half league and a labor of land in the area, which was used for many years for ranching. During the latter half of the nineteenth century German and Czech settlers moved in, subdivided the large ranches into smaller farms, and gradually replaced the earlier residents. In 1925 Frank Klecka built a store and recreation hall where several settlement roads crossed the line of the Southern Pacific Railroad between Shiner and Yoakum, and in 1928 he was followed by August Rogge, who built a cotton gin. The growing community took its name from its location on the railroad. Land in the old Johnson survey is gently sloping and relatively deep loamy clay, well-suited for growing cotton and grain sorghums. The store and gin served a population of fifty in 1950 and continued in operation during the 1980s. Cotton was the economic foundation of farming in Lavaca County. In 1906 gins there produced slightly over 40,000 bales. By 1948 however, the number had dropped to slightly over 20,000, and during the next thirty-five years production ceased completely. The gin at Midway was the last to operate in Lavaca County.