C. W. Post Rain Battles
Post, Garza County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Site of 1911-1914 dynamiting to produce rain, carried on by C. W. Post, Texas farm colonizer and cereal foods millionaire. After reading that rain often accompanies cannonading in war, Post planned "battles" to relieve droughts. He thought vertical air currents would condense vapor in atmosphere and cause rain. He first used dynamite airborne by kites, but soon replaced this dangerous method by setting off explosions on edge of Caprock. Post's experiments were said to have been 40% effective, and cost $50,000. He battled drought on farms until his death, 1914. (1967)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In the drought-stricken years of 1911-1914, cereal magnate C. W. Post waged what he called "rain battles" on the Texas Caprock, detonating dynamite in hopes of jolting moisture from the sky. Inspired by reports that downpours often followed Civil War cannonades, he first hoisted charges aloft on kites before switching to ground blasts along the escarpment. The costly experiments — some $50,000 spent — were later judged only partly effective, but Post kept at them until his death.
Why it matters
Post's rain-making campaign captures the audacious, sometimes fanciful, spirit of an era when self-made industrialists believed money and ingenuity could bend even the weather to the needs of American farms.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the early 1900s, farmers were pushing onto the semi-arid plains of West Texas, where rain was always the gamble. A wet season could make a homesteader's fortune. A dry one could ruin them. Drought was a constant threat on the Caprock and in the country below it.
It was also a time of great faith in science, invention and the power of money to solve problems. Americans had lived through the arrival of electricity, the telephone and the automobile. Making it rain didn't sound as far-fetched to many people then as it does now.
There was even a precedent. The idea that big explosions could bring rain had been around since the nineteenth century, when people noticed that rain sometimes followed large battles. In the early 1890s the federal government itself had paid for rainmaking trials with explosives in West Texas. The science never held up, but the hope did.
People & events
C. W. Post made his fortune in Battle Creek, Michigan, selling cereal foods such as Postum and Grape-Nuts. He then put much of that money into an idealistic project in Texas: a planned farming colony in Garza County, which grew into the town of Post. He wanted it to be a place where ordinary families could own land and prosper.
The colony had one problem that money couldn't easily fix, and that was dry weather. According to the marker, Post read that rain often followed the cannon fire of war, and he decided to fight drought the same way. His idea was that explosions would stir vertical air currents that squeezed moisture out of the sky. From 1911 to 1914 he staged what he called rain battles.
The early attempts were as dramatic as they were dangerous. Dynamite was carried aloft by kites. Post soon dropped that method and set off charges along the edge of the Caprock instead. By the marker's account, the experiments were said to have worked about 40 percent of the time and cost $50,000, a huge sum for the period. Post kept at it until his death in 1914.
That 40 percent figure is worth thinking about. In drought country, rain sometimes falls whether anyone sets off dynamite or not. Modern meteorology doesn't support the idea that explosions make rain, which is part of what makes Post's persistence so striking.
Its place in the American story
Post's rain battles are a vivid example of a particular American type: the self-made industrialist who believed that ambition and ingenuity could remake the land. Planned towns, irrigation schemes and railroad colonies all grew from the same confidence that nature could be managed if someone was bold enough to try.
They also belong to the long, tough history of farming in the arid West. Settlers and promoters kept running into the limits of rainfall, and many ideas, some sound and some wishful, came out of that struggle. The Dust Bowl, which came a generation later, would show how high the stakes were.
The experiments may have failed as science, but they tell an honest story about hope in dry country. The urge to control the weather never really went away. Post's dynamite on the Caprock is one colorful chapter in a debate that goes on today.
If you visit
Post sits near the edge of the Caprock, and the landscape is the best part of this stop. The land breaks at the escarpment, so you can see where Post set off his explosions and imagine the booms echoing out across the plains below.
As you stand here, remember how much hope was invested in the idea. Families in the colony were watching the sky, and a millionaire was spending a fortune on the chance that the sky would answer. Pay attention to the clouds, or the lack of them, and you'll understand the problem he was trying to solve.
The town that bears his name makes a good companion stop. Post was a planned community, and a walk around it adds the other half of this story. The rain battles were never an eccentric hobby. They were an attempt to make a whole town's dream survive in dry country.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · C. W. Post
Related events
- · Post rain battles
Themes & tags
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