Community Finds its Future in its History
Published Jan 24, 2008
The remains of a fountain at Camp Hearne
Cathy Lazarus can leave the downtown Hearne drugstore she and her husband operate in a 19th-century building. She can travel Farm-to-Market Road 485 to a stretch of Little Brazos River bottomland, and there she can hear the voice of history on the wind.
Its accent is German, from a time 60 years ago when Camp Hearne played host to one of the largest concentrations of war prisoners on American soil.
The barracks and buildings later were moved, but their foundations and roads – the footprint of a 4,700-prisoner camp – remain etched on the earth. German soldiers from Erwin Rommel’s elite Afrika Korps once marched through the streets of Hearne to get there after disembarking from trains.
“It’s the feeling you get,” Lazarus says. “It’ s the environment when you pull in there and you realize the latrine was here and the mess hall was over there. It’s kind of neat: It puts you back in time.”
Lazarus chairs the Robertson County Historical Commission and she’s president of Roll Call, a group working to restore Camp Hearne as a monument. In 2006, artifacts reclaimed from Camp Hearne will move from a Brazos Valley Natural Museum exhibit in Bryan, 25 miles to the south, to the Hearne Chamber of Commerce office on Highway 6. Later, they’ll move to a planned museum, a 10-acre park and historical walking trail on the camp’ s grounds. Hearne’s efforts to memorialize the prisoner camp earned the city a Preserve America award from the White House in 2004. It’s part of an effort to preserve history in Hearne, where the 1940s and‘50s represented its heyday as a railroad hub.
“We’re trying to do a theme in Hearne,” Lazarus says, mentioning the preservation of WPA buildings and reintroduction of neon signs.
Union Pacific still brings heavy rail traffic through Hearne, says chamber President Kent Brunette, and railcar restorer GATX employs about 500 locally. The city also wants to expand the local airport to its original 7,200-foot runway, which would make it the longest landing strip in Central Texas.
The town of about 5,000 is hardly isolated. Fully 80 percent of the Texas population lives within a 200-mile radius, and two major power plant construction projects nearby are expected to pique interest in Hearne, along with the historic preservation efforts.
“We’ve got quite a good industrial base,” Brunette says. “We recently passed a school bond election, and we’re trying to put our best foot forward: Our Web site, www.cityofhearne.com, I think, is one of the best for any town in the state of Texas.”
Story by Gary Perilloux
Photo by Stephen Cherry
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