The weevil crossed into Texas from Mexico around 1892 and moved through the cotton belt at roughly 60 to 160 kilometres a year, reaching the Atlantic seaboard by the 1920s. Females chew into a cotton square or boll, lay a single egg, and the larva feeds inside, so the damage is hidden until the structure drops.
Coffee County, Alabama, was hit hard in 1915. Local growers diversified into peanuts and livestock feed, and the following harvests were more profitable than cotton had been. The monument, unveiled in Enterprise in December 1919, stands in the middle of a street and is generally described as the only monument raised to an agricultural pest.
The insect itself was not forgiven. A coordinated eradication programme using pheromone traps, targeted insecticide and field monitoring began in the 1970s, and the weevil has been eliminated from the great majority of the United States cotton belt, though it persists in parts of Texas and further south.