ROAD TRIP: A BBM Game

[Meryl]

Normandeau, AB



The Kerry Wood Nature Centre and Historic Fort Normandeau are run by the
Normandeau Cultural and Natural History Society for the City of Red Deer.

[memento]

Uhland, Texas
Uhland stands today on what was the site of the former Live Oak Community. There was a post office from 1892 to 1902. Even with the closing of the post office, the town prospered.

As late as 1950 there were seven business in Uhland. In 1970 there were no business and 90 people living in Uhland, and today (June 2001) there is a café and a population of 386. Uhlanders commute to nearby San Marcos or Lockhart.

A marker showing where the Comanches crossed on their way to the coast during the Comanche Raid of 1840 is found just south of the former downtown Uhland.
 
                                                        The former office of the Milk Bottle Motel

[jpwagoneer1964]

Dickinson, Tx

[Fran]

Nopolo, MX

[Meryl]

Odlaw, TX

[jpwagoneer1964]

Windemere, Tx

[Lynne]

Estanco Viejo, MEXICO...appears to translate to 'Watertight Old'.  Looks pretty in that desolate way.

[MaineWriter]

Olfen, TX

Olfen, ten miles north of the confluence of the Colorado and Concho rivers in Runnels County, is a German Catholic community. In the early 1890s German Catholics who had immigrated to Colorado, Fayette, and other counties in Southeast Texas from 1846 to 1890 looked toward West Texas for farmland, a healthy climate, and a place to establish a Catholic environment. By the 1890s the railroad had built as far as Ballinger on the Colorado River. Bernard Matthiesen, from Ellinger in Fayette County, went by train to Ballinger in June 1891 and again in October 1891 by horse and wagon to look for farmland. In 1893 he bought land and moved his wife Elizabeth (Hoelscher) and family to what is now Olfen. In 1901 Matthiesen and Willy Glass wrote to Bishop John Anthony Forest in San Antonio and obtained permission to build a school, to be used also as a church. Father Frank Maas was the first pastor.

The community was first called Fussy Creek, then Maas, and finally Olfen, after Olfen in Westphalia. The first mass in the church-school was the wedding mass of Bernard Niehues and Amalia Matthiesen. The new bride, given the privilege of naming the church, chose the name St. Boniface, for a popular German saint. The community grew quickly. In 1909 Father Frank Garmann, who had succeeded Father Maas, built a new church. In 1921 a group of men from outside Olfen, whipped up by the anti-German sentiment during and after World War I, took Father Joseph Meiser from the rectory, intending to tar and feather him. Unknown to them the housekeeper, who had managed to conceal herself, telephoned parishioners, and within minutes a caravan of cars was in pursuit. The men, seeing them, pounded on Father Meiser and shoved him out of the car, giving up the plan to tar and feather him. The 1909 church burned to the ground on January 15, 1922. The people immediately got to work and in ten months built a large and beautiful Romanesque church, dedicated on November 16, 1922. The community was still listed in 1990.

L

[jpwagoneer1964]

New Berlin, Tx

[memento]

Nixon, TX

History in a Pecan Shell

Named after John T. Nixon when the Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio Railway crossed his ranch in 1906. Nixon sold lots on the site and within months, the new town had a gin, barber, bank, butcher, store, doctor and a lumberyard. Originally named Nixonville with the opening of the post office in 1906, it was shortened two years later.

That same year the residents and school of neighboring Rancho, Texas moved to Nixon with their church following in 1911. By 1914 there were 1,300 people with the previously mentioned businesses along with a newspaper, telephone service and at least two more stores.

Nixon's population shrank to 1,037 in 1930, but by 1940 it had increased to more than 1,800. Railroad service to Nixon ceased in the 1970s.