Camp Maxey
Paris, Lamar County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Recognizing in 1940 that hosting peacetime draftees might revive the county's economy, the city of Paris sent a request for the army to build a training camp here. The local American Legion acquired land options. Delegations from the Chamber of Commerce of Lamar County received initial support, but Congressman Lyndon Johnson moved the planned camp to his district at Bastrop. In response U. S. Senator Tom Connally and army officials ensured a camp for Paris, confirmed in July 1941. The 70,000 acre site was being surveyed when the U. S. entered World War II in December. Camp Maxey, named for C. S. A. General and U. S. Senator Sam Bell Maxey from paris, was activated on July 15, 1942. Its main entrance was "Gate 5" marked by stone portals at this site. Two infantry divisions, the 102nd "Ozark" and 99th "Checkerboard," trained here with the 250th Field Artillery and other army units. A regional hospital and a prisoner of war camp hosting 7,000 Germans were part of the reservation. Local women formed the "Maxey Command" to host dances for the total of 194,800 soldiers stationed here. Area residents housed thousands of dependents and filled 10,300 civilian jobs on base. The camp was closed when the P. O. W. stockade was vacated in early 1946.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
When the nation began mobilizing on the eve of World War II, the city of Paris lobbied hard for an army training camp, seeing in peacetime draftees a way to revive the local economy. After a political tug-of-war—Congressman Lyndon Johnson briefly diverted the camp to his own district—Senator Tom Connally secured it for Paris, and Camp Maxey was activated in July 1942 on a 70,000-acre site. Named for Confederate general and U.S. senator Sam Bell Maxey, it trained nearly 195,000 soldiers, housed a hospital and a 7,000-man German POW camp, and filled thousands of civilian jobs before closing in 1946.
Why it matters
Camp Maxey shows how the vast wartime mobilization reshaped small-town America, turning a Texas county into a training ground that funneled tens of thousands of soldiers toward the fronts of World War II.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
As the 1940s opened, the United States was a nation edging toward a war it had not yet joined, beginning to mobilize on a scale never before seen in peacetime. The country was also still climbing out of the Depression, and for many small communities the coming military buildup looked less like the approach of catastrophe than like a lifeline.
In Lamar County, the leaders of Paris, Texas, saw opportunity in that mobilization. A large army training camp could mean payrolls, contracts, and jobs, a transfusion for a local economy that had struggled through the lean 1930s. Towns across the country were competing for exactly such installations, and Paris meant to win one.
When the United States entered World War II in December 1941, that local hope became part of a vast national undertaking, as the country raced to build the bases where millions of citizen-soldiers would be forged into an army.
People & events
The camp did not come easily. In 1940 the city of Paris formally asked the army to build a training camp nearby, and the local American Legion secured land options while Chamber of Commerce delegations pressed the case. They won initial support, only to see Congressman Lyndon Johnson steer the planned camp toward his own district at Bastrop. It took the intervention of U.S. Senator Tom Connally, working with army officials, to secure a camp for Paris after all, confirmed in July 1941.
Surveyors were still laying out the sprawling 70,000-acre site when the nation went to war that December. The camp was activated on July 15, 1942, and named for Sam Bell Maxey, a Paris man who had been both a Confederate general and, later, a United States senator. Its main entrance, "Gate 5," was framed by the stone portals that stand at this spot.
What followed was a small city at war. Two infantry divisions, the 102nd "Ozark" and the 99th "Checkerboard," trained here alongside the 250th Field Artillery and other units. The reservation held a regional hospital and a prisoner-of-war camp for some 7,000 Germans. Local women organized the "Maxey Command" to host dances for the soldiers, and across the war 194,800 troops passed through. Area residents housed thousands of their dependents and filled 10,300 civilian jobs on the base before it closed in early 1946.
Its place in the American story
Camp Maxey is a vivid example of how total war reshaped small-town America. The vast mobilization of World War II did not happen only on distant battlefields; it happened in places like Lamar County, where a stretch of Texas countryside was transformed almost overnight into a training ground funneling tens of thousands of soldiers toward the fronts.
The numbers tell the story of that transformation: nearly 195,000 soldiers trained, 10,300 civilian jobs created, thousands of dependents housed by ordinary families. Communities that had scraped through the Depression found themselves suddenly at the center of the national war effort, their economies and daily lives remade.
The prisoner-of-war camp holding 7,000 Germans reflects another little-remembered chapter of the home front, when hundreds of thousands of Axis prisoners were held on American soil, many in the rural South and West. Camp Maxey gathers all these threads, the political wrangling, the economic hope, the training divisions, the POWs, into one place where the enormous machinery of American mobilization touched the ground.
If you visit
Begin at the stone portals that once marked "Gate 5," the main entrance through which nearly 195,000 soldiers once passed. Standing there, it takes an act of imagination to repopulate the quiet with the barracks, the marching columns, and the dust of a 70,000-acre military city, but the marker gives you the figures to build that picture.
Let the scale sink in as you read: two full infantry divisions trained here, a hospital treated the sick and injured, and thousands of German prisoners lived behind the wire. This was not a minor outpost but a major engine of the war effort planted in the Texas countryside.
The site fits naturally into a Lamar County history trip, and it rewards a visitor willing to slow down and think about the citizen-soldiers who shipped out from here, the local families who fed and housed the newcomers, and the way a single county was swept up in the largest war the world has known.
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
- · Sam Bell Maxey
- · Lyndon Johnson
- · Tom Connally
Related events
- · World War II
Themes & tags
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