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Nordheim
Shooting Club Dance Hall
Photo Courtesy Will
Beauchamp, October 2008 |
History in a Pecan
Shell
In the 1880s much of land around present-day Nordheim was owned
by H. Runge & Co. of Cuero. With the arrival of
the railroad (The San Antonio
and Aransas Pass) in 1895, a townsite was platted and a post office opened the
following year.
The president of Ringe and Co. suggested the name of his
hometown back in Germany and it has been Nordheim ever since. St. Paul's Evangelical
Lutheran Church organized in 1896 and the town gained a passenger depot in 1901.
Nordheim
got telephone service by 1900 and a newspaper and hotel in 1902. The town’s predominant
German population formed numerous social organizations including a Sons of Hermann
lodge as well as a shooting club and a brass band. A bandstand constructed on
Pilot Knob (the highest point in DeWitt County) became the town’s social center.
From
an estimated population of 122 people in 1902, the town grew to 400 residents
by 1915. Nordheim incorporated in 1917 after the state proposed a law allowing
only incorporated towns to operate saloons. By 1927 the estimated population peaked
at 600 and Nordheim organized its own Independent School District, drawing in
other schools from surrounding communities.
On May 6, 1930, a tornado
struck the town, killing eighteen people. The devastation of the tornado and the
onset of the Great Depression set the town into a decline and a year after the
tornado struck the population had decreased to 400. |
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the early 1950s it had risen to 477 but by the mid 1980s it had returned to 369.
The Nordheim cotton gin managed to stay in operation until 1970. The Nordheim
Brass Band, thought to be the last “continuous pioneer German brass band in Texas”
disbanded in the 1970s. The movie Paris, Texas, was partially filmed in Nordheim
in 1984. |
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Nordheim
Shooting Club Dance Hall
Photo Courtesy Will
Beauchamp, October 2008 |
Nordheim
Shooting Club historical marker
Photo Courtesy Will
Beauchamp, October 2008 |
Pilot
Knob historical marker
Photo Courtesy Will
Beauchamp, October 2008 | |
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