Crystal City Internment Camp

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2014.

From the record

“Crystal City Internment Camp, located near Crystal City, Texas, was a place of confinement for people of Japanese, German, and Italian descent during World War II, and has been variously described as a detention facility or a concentration camp. The camp, which was originally designed to hold 3,500 people, opened in December 1943 and was officially closed on February 11, 1948.”
Wikipedia article Crystal City Internment Camp, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 2 National Register listings published here for Zavala County · listed in 2014 · category: Site.

Sources: the Wikipedia article · the National Register database, National Park Service

The listing

What is counted as historic. The nomination lists 3 sitess as contributing to the listing.
Still standing. The Park Service records this property as extant.
Address. Roughly bounded by Airport Dr., Popeye Ln., N. 7th & N.12th Aves., Crystal City, 78839
When was it listed? 2014-08-01
Category. site
Census division. Crystal City
National Register reference number. 14000474 - assigned by the National Park Service when the property was listed.

Fires near this property

119 since 2005

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 119 fires within 5 miles of Crystal City Internment Camp between 2005 and 2020, burning about 518 acres in total. 1 started naturally. 4 were recorded as arson. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Reported cause	Fires
Debris and open burning	50
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	36
Misuse of fire by a minor	13
Equipment and vehicle use	6
Arson/incendiarism	4
Smoking	4
Power generation/transmission/distribution	4
Natural	1
Recreation and ceremony	1

The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.

Date	Cause	Size	Reported by	Name on the report
9 September 2011	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Texas A & M Forest Service	FM 582 RIVER LOTS
5 September 2017	Debris and open burning	1.0 acres	Texas A & M Forest Service	FM 582
25 September 2005	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	40 acres	Texas A & M Forest Service	not named
20 September 2016	Debris and open burning	1.0 acres	Texas A & M Forest Service	HIKE AND BIKE BRUSH
18 September 2019	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	1.0 acres	Texas A & M Forest Service	EXPOSITION GROUNDS
17 September 2019	Equipment and vehicle use	1.6 acres	Texas A & M Forest Service	STARR
16 September 2019	Debris and open burning	1.0 acres	Texas A & M Forest Service	OLD UVALDE HWY
20 August 2017	Debris and open burning	1.0 acres	Texas A & M Forest Service	RIVER LOTS FIRE

Every fire recorded in Zavala County

Storms near this property

22 since 1995

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Crystal City, the town this property stands in, in 22 storm reports between 1995 and 2023: 8 hail, 8 flash flood, 6 thunderstorm wind. The reports record 2 injuries. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date opens the federal record of that event.

When	Event	Place named	Harm	What the report says
April 2004	Hail	Crystal City	1 hurt, $500,000	A line of strong thunderstorms had stuck Crystal City near 1240 pm CST. Although individual storms were moving toward the northeast, the line appeared to be moving to the southeast. The downburst winds were all discharged toward the southwest, as all damage around Crystal City area was blown in that direction. Damage was severe in Crystal City. Leaves had been shredded from trees and plastered onto the sides of the cars and houses, and streets were covered with the shredded leaves. Homes had damage to their outside walls, roofs, and windows. What was shocking was to see the piles of semi-melted hail still as high as 2 feet in some of the drifts created by the flooding. In spite of the fact that the hail had been melting for over 24 hours when the survey was made, it was still piled in spotty waves across the city from east to west and north to south. Hail was reported to have been as large as 1.5 to 2 inches in diameter, with a couple of reports of hail to 3 inches. The high winds, combined with hail and rain, caused widespread damage to homes, destroying two mobile homes and the roofs of two houses. Several dozen homes in Crystal City sustained some type of damage. Some of the worst damage occurred at the library and the H.E.B. grocery store. The metal roof was blown off the library and deposited on the southwest side of the building. The roof of the H.E.B. grocery store collapsed. It appeared to be beneath the area where the air conditioners were positioned on the west side of the store. This is also where the rain and ice would have accumulated the thickest and would possibly have clogged drainage holes. One injury was reported in the storms.
June 1999	Flash Flood	Crystal City	1 hurt, $40,000	no account filed
June 2003	Thunderstorm Wind	Crystal City	$50,000	Severe thunderstorm winds blew down trees and power poles near Crystal City.
May 1995	Thunderstorm Wind	Crystal City	$20,000	Damage was reported to roofs, with numerous trees uprooted.
March 2003	Thunderstorm Wind	Crystal City	$10,000	An NWS survey noted that several trees had been knocked down and large limbs were torn out of trees in a very spotty manner from the southwest corner of the county into the town of Crystal City.
September 2000	Thunderstorm Wind	Crystal City	$10,000	Severe winds from a thunderstorm caused a pavillion to collapse in Crystal City.
August 1996	Flash Flood	Crystal City	$10,000	no account filed
May 2023	Hail	Crystal City	$5,000	A thunderstorm produced hail up to baseball size in Crystal City. The hail destroyed vehicle windshields and windows.
March 1998	Thunderstorm Wind	Crystal City	$3,000	Trees were blown down by severe thunderstorm winds.
May 2022	Hail	Crystal City	-	A thunderstorm produced dime to quarter size hail in Crystal City.
May 2015	Flash Flood	Crystal City	-	West Lake Street in Crystal City was reportedly completely flooded.
July 2007	Flash Flood	Crystal City	-	General 2 to 3 inch rain totals were reported over Karnes, Atascosa, Frio, and Zavala Counties. Up to 4 inches fell in the southwest corner of Zavala County. Roads were flooded around Cometa and west of Crystal City.
July 2007	Flash Flood	Crystal City	-	Scattered thunderstorms produced general rain totals of 2 to 3 inches over Kinney, Uvalde, Zavala, Medina, and Frio Counties in the afternoon of July 3, with highest amounts in Zavala County near 5 inches to the northeast of Batesville. FM187, FM1178, and FM1025 were closed.
July 2007	Flash Flood	Crystal City	-	The thunderstorms that developed in Frio County spread westward during the morning into Zavala County, producing generally 2 to 3 inches of rain. The highest totals were at Crystal City where up to 7 inches fell. Widespread flooding developed in and around Crystal City that required the evacuation of about two dozen families. Many of the roads in the Crystal City area were closed through mid-afternoon.
May 2007	Flash Flood	Crystal City	-	Scattered showers and thunderstorms produced general 2 to 3 inch rain amounts in western Dimmit and western Zavala Counties. FM65 was closed east of Crystal City due to high water.
May 2007	Flash Flood	Crystal City	-	Scattered showers and thunderstorms produced general 1 to 2 inch rain amounts in western Zavala County with 3 inches between Crystal City and La Pryor. FM1025 and FM65 were closed due to high water.
June 2005	Thunderstorm Wind	Crystal City	-	Severe thunderstorms struck Crystal City, knocking down trees and blowing over power lines. Falling trees damaged several homes and vehicles in the city. Thunderstorm winds caused slightly less damage north of Crystal City, taking off tree limbs in LaPryor and Batesville. Wind gusts there were estimated at 40 to 50 mph.
February 1998	Hail	Crystal City	-	Hail driven by winds of 30 to 40 knots destroyed around 350 acres of onions and cabbage.
March 1995	Hail	Crystal City	-	Widespread car damage reported from large hail in LaPryor.
March 1995	Hail	Crystal City	-	Widespread car damage reported from large hail in LaPryor.
April 2007	Hail	Crystal City	-	no account filed
March 1999	Hail	Crystal City	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in Zavala County

Map coverage status

No historic map-sheet match is published for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary. Browse the county's mapped places while that work is pending.

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 14000474 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Zavala County	All 2 listed properties in this county.

Provenance

Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.