The Iron Horse Trap: How Tiny Cottonwood, MN Took On Big Oil
When American farmers rapidly traded their workhorses for internal combustion tractors in the early 1920s, they unknowingly stepped into a beautifully engineered corporate trap. Overnight, they went from self-sufficient energy producers to captive corporate consumers. This episode tracks the incredible, forgotten history of June 9, 1921, when a handful of Lyon County neighbors staged an act of raw economic self-defense by founding the nation’s very first cooperative organized exclusively to handle petroleum, and sparking a massive legal war that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
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