Site of World War II P. O. W. Camp

Texas ran branch camps like this one for farm labor, and the Texas Historical Commission's teaching guide on the program gives the terms. Farmers paid the government $1.50 per prisoner per day. The prisoner got 80 cents in scrip good only at the camp store, and the remaining 70 cents went to the government. Geneva rules barred work tied directly to war operations. Rice was a main job: in Colorado County in 1944, about 600 prisoners harvested more than 80 percent of roughly 40,000 acres. Statewide, the Extension Service reported 102,088 acres of rice harvested by prisoners.

What the plaque says

Site of World War II P. O. W. Camp During World War II, over 50,000 German prisoners of war were interned in over 70 Texas P. O. W. camps. Base camps were established at military bases throughout the state. The base camps operated a number of branch camps in their respective areas. Detailed from a base camp at Huntsville, about 140 German prisoners were housed in a U. S. Army tent camp near this site in 1944. Located on land owned by the Lutcher Moore Lumber Company, the camp was built with construction materials and labor provided by the Orange County Farm Labor Committee of the U. S. Agricultural Extension Service. Transported to their work details by army trucks each day, the German prisoners worked as laborers in area rice fields, helping to bring in the harvest of farmers whose employees had gone to war. The work of the prisoners became a crucial element in the area's wartime food production, and many of the prisoners enjoyed good working relationships with their employers. Although the original prison camp operated for only a short time in 1944, prisoners transported from camps in China, Texas, and Edgerly, Louisiana, were once again employed on Orange County farms in 1945. (1991)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Shangri La Botanical Gardens and Nature Center — 3.1 mi
  More than 250 acres on Adams Bayou, begun by H. J. Lutcher Stark in 1937, with garden rooms, a cypress-tupelo swamp, a heronry blind and free pontoon tours in season.
• Stark Museum of Art — 4.1 mi
  A white-marble museum in Orange built by the Stark Foundation and opened in 1978, holding Western art, American Indian art, Audubon's Birds of America and Steuben glass, free to enter.
• Spindletop-Gladys City Boomtown Museum — 18 mi
  A re-created oil boomtown on the Lamar University campus, with a derrick, period shops, a 1941 granite monument and an optional re-enactment of the January 1901 Lucas gusher.
• Museum of the Gulf Coast — 18 mi
  Port Arthur's regional museum in a former bank building: fossils, Native Americans, the petroleum story, a 125-foot history mural and Halls of Fame for musicians, athletes and artists.

More markers nearby

• Madison Lodge No. 126, A. F. & A. M. — 2.1 mi
• Winfree Baptist Church — 3.4 mi
• First National Bank of Orange — 3.4 mi
• St. Paul's Episcopal Church — 3.5 mi