Westphalia Rural Historic District

Westphalia Rural Historic District covers nearly 5,500 acres of upland prairie in western Falls County, Texas, built around a village settled by German Catholic families in the late 19th century. The village centers on the 1894 Church of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin, whose twin steeples are visible from nearly everywhere in the district. Nearby are the 1896 Westphalia Little School, a 1921 school and convent, St. Mary's Cemetery with its 1908 bronze crucifixion statue, early 20th century stores, and the last historic cotton gin. Beyond the village, 35 historic farmsteads hold late 19th and early 20th century houses and outbuildings within fields, pastures and fence rows that follow the original grid of roughly 270-acre tracts. The district was listed because this layout, its buildings and its cultural ties to the church remain largely intact. Highway 320, built in 1938, ended the community's isolation and began a slow population decline, yet descendants of the pioneer settlers still live and farm here.