GAINESVILLE, Texas — Memorial Day in Cooke County carries a weight that most small towns can’t claim. This is a place where 300,000 soldiers trained for war, where Gold Star families are honored by name, and where the nation’s highest-decorated heroes return year after year because a North Texas community decided, a quarter-century ago, that someone should thank them in person.
The military thread runs deep here. It’s in the courthouse dome, the airport gateway, and the names on the monuments along California Street. Here’s how Cooke County earned it.
Camp Howze: A City Built for War
In the summer of 1942, the U.S. War Department broke ground on Camp Howze, a sprawling infantry training installation northwest of Gainesville. Named for Major General Robert Lee Howze — a Congressional Medal of Honor recipient from Overton, Texas — the camp was activated on August 17, 1942, and within months had grown into a small city.
At full capacity, Camp Howze housed 40,000 soldiers at a time. It had its own hospital, airfield, bus station, movie theaters, chapels, and four USO clubs. One of the largest laundry plants of its kind kept the operation running. Three infantry divisions trained there before deploying to the European theater:
- The 84th “Railsplitters” Division
- The 86th “Black Hawk” Division
- The 103rd “Cactus” Division
Between 1943 and 1946, the camp also held roughly 3,000 German prisoners of war, who worked on area farms and in local industries during their internment.
The impact on Gainesville was enormous. A town of a few thousand suddenly had tens of thousands of young soldiers cycling through, filling the downtown streets on leave, patronizing local businesses, and in some cases marrying local women. Cooke County’s economy and identity were reshaped in just four years.
On February 18, 1946, Camp Howze was declared surplus. The buildings were dismantled and sold — first to returning veterans, then to civilians. The land went back to local ranchers. Today, a water tower and a handful of concrete foundations are all that remain of the installation itself.
But the memory persists. A monument honoring all three divisions stands at the gateway of the Gainesville Municipal Airport. The “A Call to Duty” statue at the TxDOT Travel Information Center on I-35 honors the combat veterans of the 103rd Infantry Division. And the Camp Howze Museum, supported by over 100 oral history interviews with veterans and their families, preserves the stories of the men who trained on this ground before shipping out to fight.
The Army Corps of Engineers returned to the former Camp Howze site in 2026 to search for unexploded WWII-era munitions still buried in the soil — a reminder that the war’s footprint never fully disappeared.
The Courthouse Clocks: A World War I Memorial
The Cooke County Courthouse, the 1911 Beaux Arts landmark in the center of downtown Gainesville, carries its own quiet tribute. The four clocks in the copper-clad dome were added in 1920 as a memorial to Cooke County’s World War I veterans. They’ve been keeping time over the courthouse square for more than a century — a daily, visible reminder that the county has been honoring its service members long before the formal programs began.
The Gold Star Families Memorial
At 1602 West California Street in Gainesville stands the Gold Star Families Memorial Monument — part of a national initiative founded by Medal of Honor recipient Hershel “Woody” Williams to honor families who lost a loved one in military service.
The monument recognizes a sacrifice that outlasts the war itself: the parents, spouses, and children who carry the loss of a service member for the rest of their lives. Its placement in Gainesville is no accident. This is a community that understands what that sacrifice means.
Medal of Honor Host City: The Only One in America
In 2001, Gainesville became the only city in the United States with an organized annual program to host living Medal of Honor recipients. The Medal of Honor Host City Program, now a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, has welcomed 59 of the 61 living recipients over the past 25 years.
Every spring, recipients travel to Gainesville for a week of events: a motorcade through town, a museum ribbon-cutting, a tree dedication ceremony, a formal banquet, a downtown parade, and book signings. The program also maintains Medal of Honor Park and the Homegrown Hero Walking Trail.
The effort is entirely community-driven — funded by local donors, organized by volunteers, and attended by thousands. In 2012, Rand McNally named Gainesville the most patriotic small town in America, a distinction that surprised no one locally.
This year’s event, held April 15–18, honored nine recipients. The program’s 25th anniversary reinforced what the community has known since the beginning: that saying thank you in person, every year, is not a ceremonial gesture. It’s an obligation freely chosen.
A Complicated History, Honestly Held
Cooke County’s military history is not without its darker chapters. In October 1862, during the Civil War, 41 men suspected of Union sympathies were hanged in Gainesville in what became known as the Great Hanging — one of the largest mass lynchings in American history. The men were tried by a self-appointed “Citizens’ Court” with no legal standing; 14 were executed without any trial at all.
The Great Hanging is a painful episode, and for a long time it was one the community preferred not to discuss. That has changed. A historical marker now stands at the site, and the Morton Museum includes the event in its telling of local history. Reckoning with the full record — the heroism and the injustice — is part of what makes a community’s memory honest.
Memorial Day in Cooke County
This Memorial Day, flags will fly at the courthouse, at the Camp Howze monuments, at the Gold Star memorial on California Street, and on the graves of veterans in cemeteries across the county — from Fairview in Gainesville to Sacred Heart in Muenster.
The men who trained at Camp Howze are almost all gone now. The youngest World War II veterans are in their late nineties. The Korean and Vietnam War generations are aging. The post-9/11 veterans are raising families in the same communities their grandparents served from.
What endures is the decision this county made, again and again, to remember. Not as a slogan or a brand, but as a practice: monuments maintained, stories collected, heroes welcomed home. On a day set aside for the ones who didn’t come home, that practice matters.
The Camp Howze Museum is open by appointment; visit camphowzemuseum.org for information. The Medal of Honor Host City Program is at medalofhonorhostcity.com. Cooke County Veterans Services can be reached through the county offices at co.cooke.tx.us.