R. L. Neubert and his brother-in-law Sherman Adams, owned Adams and Neubert, a large, highly successful business with two farms, a very large hay shipping operation, a large ice plant, a coal business, a truck and farm equipment dealership, and a brick manufacturing operation. Disaster hit this business beginning about 1929. There were two successive years of crop failures caused by a terrible drought in 1929/30. The rains came in September of 1930, but it was too late. Because the economy of Okolona was so dependent on agriculture, all three banks in Okolona failed in 1930. The stock market crash in 1929 and the Great Depression added to the problems. R. L. became ill with Hodgkin's Disease and died in February of 1930. Most of the Adams and Neubert business operations were shut down during the depression. The ice plant, which was the last part of the business still in operation, was sold about 1947.