Site of World War II Prisoner of War Camp
Princeton, Collin County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Here in 1941, with the Hon. Sam Rayburn, speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, in attendance, a migratory labor camp was dedicated. With the coming of World War II later in the decade, however, federal officials converted the site for use as a camp to hold German prisoners of war. While here, the German soldiers worked on Princeton area farms, providing valuable labor assistance. For many years following the prisoners release in 1946, this site again served as a camp for migrant workers. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Dedicated in 1941 with House Speaker Sam Rayburn in attendance, this began as a camp for migratory farm laborers. Once World War II arrived, federal officials converted it to hold German prisoners of war, who worked the surrounding Princeton-area farms and helped fill a wartime labor shortage. After the prisoners were released in 1946, the grounds returned to their original purpose, sheltering migrant workers for years afterward.
Why it matters
It preserves a little-known corner of the home front, when hundreds of thousands of enemy POWs were held on American soil and put to work in the fields that fed a nation at war.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Sam Rayburn
Related events
- · World War II
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Farmersville
Farmersville, TX
Farmersville began in 1849 as a settlement on the Jefferson-McKinney Road, named by pioneers for their chief occupation. It gathered churches, a school, and a public square, incorporated in 1873, and grew into a farm-trade center famous in the 1930s as the "Onion Capital of North Texas," shipping over a thousand carloads a year. Among its residents was Audie Murphy, the most decorated American soldier of World War II, who lived here before entering the Army.
Audie Murphy's Homecoming, June 15, 1945
Farmersville, TX
On his 18th birthday Audie Murphy enlisted in the U.S. Army, and over more than two years of combat across North Africa, Sicily, Italy, and France he became the most decorated American soldier of World War II, earning every Army valor citation, including the Medal of Honor. When he came home to Farmersville on June 15, 1945, thousands packed the town square, and Life magazine put the reunion on its cover.
Prairie Grove Cemetery
Farmersville, TX
Prairie Grove Cemetery served the rural Aleo community from the late 1800s into the mid-20th century, tied to the Prairie Grove Baptist Church that set aside its land. Its oldest known grave dates to 1895, and it holds victims of the deadly 1927 tornado that struck nearby Nevada. The mother and grandparents of Audie Murphy, the most decorated American soldier of World War II, who lived in the area for a time, rest here as well.
Van Winkle Cemetery
Princeton, TX
This burial ground has served the vanished community of Climax since the mid-1800s, when a Missouri farmer named William Warden settled the Blackland Prairie in 1851. At its peak around 1910 Climax held some hundred residents with cotton gins, a school, a church, and a store, but the settlement slowly dwindled to memory. The cemetery honors surveyor David Van Winkle, and among its graves lie a toll-bridge builder, a slave remembered in oral tradition as the earliest burial, and military veterans.