A Gastonia Gazette clipping featuring the 1910 Cadillac once owned by textile pioneer George W. Ragan as it passed Marietta Street on Franklin Avenue in the Grand Cotton Festival parade, June 1941. Note in the background the former home of Mrs. E. C. Wilson and an Amoco service station that had built in its front yard. Both were demolished for the erection of the National Bank of Commerce building in 1956. (Click button to see more about the Wilson home and the National Bank of Commerce building. See Robert Ragan's book, The Textile Heritage of Gaston County, North Carolina, 1848-2000 for the story of the Festival.) The Grand Cotton Festival was held 1938-1941 and again in 1946 after World War II to showcase the area's textile manufacturing industry and to celebrate the emergence from the Great Depression. (Submitted by Deb Lewis Erwin.)