Westphalia Rural Historic District

Set amidst the blackland prairie of western Falls County, the Westphalia Rural Historic District encompasses a cohesive collection of late 19th and early 20th-century farms surrounding the small village of Westphalia. This rural historic landscape continues to evoke the cultural traditions of the community's German Catholic founders. Initially settling in the region in the 1880s, these pioneers established agricultural patterns still evident in building and cultivation characteristics, the spatial organization of farmsteads, and methods of boundary demarcation. Consistent vegetation patterns, construction methods, and road networks further reinforce this continuity. As a result, this rural historic landscape retains strong visual evidence of its late 19th and early 20th-century development patterns. The Westphalia Rural Historic District is therefore nominated to the National Register of Historic Places under Criterion A for its agricultural associations. It is also eligible at the local level of significance as an illustrative example of community planning and development in a rural setting.

A group of six German Catholic families established the community of Westphalia in the early 1880s. Most had emigrated from the Westphalia district of Germany to Texas in the decade following the American Civil War. They followed Theodore Rabroker from the village of Frelsburg in northeastern Colorado County to the unbroken grassland of the Martin Byerly Survey in Falls County. The desire to farm their own land, educate their children according to their religious beliefs, and practice their Catholic faith without interference compelled them to break new ground. On these founding principles, they built a church and school facilities at the heart of an extended rural agricultural community. Guided by tradition and faith, the community of Westphalia prospered for more than 100 years. Today, the village and surrounding farms comprise a rural historic landscape that bespeaks the region's agrarian past.

EARLY HISTORY OF WESTERN FALLS COUNTY

Early Anglo-European settlement in Falls County concentrated in the fertile bottomlands of the Brazos and Little Rivers in the eastern portion of the county. Farmers considered the blackland prairie of the western half of the county undesirable for agriculture. In the decade preceding the Civil War, the region's few residents primarily engaged in stock raising on the vast unfenced range.

Although immigration into the county virtually ceased during the Civil War, thousands of displaced southern farmers came to Texas in the period after the war. These new settlers, particularly those from the red clay regions of the southeast, shunned the Blackland prairie, however. An immigrant of this period refused to trade a gun for a half section of land (320 acres) because "the land was black, and no one believed that anything but red soil was good for raising cotton". With bottomland at a premium during this period, however, some immigrants opted to raise cattle in the relatively inexpensive grasslands of western Falls County.

Cattle ranged freely across the region's prairies throughout the 1870s and early 1880s. The entire area remained unfenced until about 1884. A few cattlemen like Elijah Davison, who raised stock near present Westphalia, achieved success. When Davison established his herds in western Falls County during the 1860s and early 1870s, "it was then on the borderland of the limitless prairie; there were no mesquites, except very old and hoary ones, as the periodical prairie fires that swept the plains kept them burned back".

The free range allowed Texans to raise beef for about the same cost as chickens. As a result, Texas became the dominant cattle-producing state, with major markets in New Orleans, Shreveport, and Alexandria. From the late 1860s until the mid-1880s, cattlemen like Davison and his partner George H. Gassaway conducted annual drives to market, linking up with the Chisholm Trail at Proctor's Spring in present Waco. Successful stockraisers achieved a comfortable, if not luxurious, livelihood from the open range. A successful rancher like Davison, for example, often lived in a small log cabin with dirt floors. Enough ranchers lived in the vicinity of Pond Creek by the late 1870s to support a school in the area. Willow Springs School was established near Davison's ranch in about 1877. Encouraged by high beef prices and improved access to rail transportation between 1880 and 1885, area stockmen increased their herds until the range in the western part of the county became overcrowded. Concurrently, farmers began buying land in the open range area, fencing it for cultivation. By 1884-85 these fences began impeding the free range of cattle and the cattle drives.

Seeking a practical solution to market access, both ranchers and stock farmers encouraged the construction of rail lines through the region. Poor quality roads and the region's thick clay mud hampered travel, particularly after rain. Farmers often struggled to get their products by ox cart to the nearest market in Houston, about 180 miles to the south. Construction of the Waco trunk of the Houston and Texas Central Railroad (H&TC) through the southeast quadrant of the county revolutionized the transportation of cattle and farm products. The San Antonio and Aransas Pass (SA&AP) extended a trunk line into western Falls County during this period. The Texas Townsite Company of Waco purchased 1,600 acres of Gassaway's ranch in 1889, donating a right-of-way to the SA&AP in exchange for the privilege of developing the town of Lott. Lott's access to the rail line subsequently drained the populations of small rural communities in the region.

By the 1880s the Blackland prairie achieved recognition as "the great cotton belt of the Brazos River". Statistics for the county in 1880 documented river valley production of 500 pounds of lint cotton and 50-75 bushels of corn per acre. Consisting "of rich prairie and well-timbered lands, about equally divided," the upland prairie produced 35-50 bushels of corn per acre, 15-30 bushels of wheat, 50-75 bushels of rye and barley, and 350-500 pounds of lint cotton per acre. Unimproved land in Falls County varied from $2.00 to $5.00 per acre and nearly all Brazos Valley lands were in cultivation, planted primarily in cotton and corn. The population of the county was estimated at 20,000 with people from every state and many from foreign countries. A contemporary writer described an idyllic scene in Falls County: "Numerous schools are scattered over the county, all well-attended; church spires rear their heads in the midst of every community, a sure indication of morality and peace". It was apparent that the prairies were no longer considered inferior lands and it is in this context that the first German immigrants came to the place in western Falls County that became known as Westphalia.