Round Top's Rifle Hall

The German inhabitants of Round Top organised a Schuetzen Verein in 1873, a shooting and social club of the kind common in the old country. It bought five and a half acres in 1881 and doubled that nine years later, built a dance hall in 1882, made the grounds the home of the town's long running Fourth of July celebration and called the place Schuetzen Park. In its early years the park had a bowling alley, a carousel, a saloon, an ice cream stand and a place to tie up a horse. The club did not formally charter with the State of Texas until 1921, forty eight years after it began, and at that point its English name became its legal one: the Round Top Rifle Association. Its chartered purpose was the support and encouragement of innocent out-door sports, such as bicycle riding, target and trap shooting, open air athletics, games, dancing, and others of a like character. The charter survives and so do newspaper accounts of the hall going back to 1882, but the 1873 founding date rests on the association's own records. The hall's second life began in the autumn of 1968. Emma Lee Turney, a Houston show promoter who was already running around eighteen antiques shows a year, put on a two day fair here on the first weekend of October, advertised as an Oktoberfest with a biergarten alongside the booths. Nobody can now agree how many dealers came, and the figures in circulation run from twenty two to twenty six. What it grew into is another matter entirely. Turney ran the fair until she sold the business in 2005, and she died in 2021. The shows now sprawl for miles along the highway south of town, twice a year.