From Nîmes to Fort Worth via Saint-Gilles, these anecdotes and places which connect Gard to the United States

Tuesday, November 5, is the big day for American voters who will choose between Democratic candidate Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump, former president. News that will be followed around the world, including in Gard which is full of anecdotes and places that link us to the United States.

The unmissable white house

If one day Donald Trump comes to visit Nîmes, it is perhaps at the Golf course of Nîmes countryside, on the Garons plateau, that he will test his swing with, as a backdrop, the White House to remind him of that of Washington. A replica of Nîmes fashion which serves as a clubhouse that we owe to Georges Arnaud, a banker from a Nîmes family. The latter, returning from an American trip, insisted on building “The White Home” in 1902, the den of the presidents of the United States. Golf came later in 1955 thanks to Paul Alcay.

The friendship between Folco Baroncelli and a Sioux chief

On October 27, 1905, Buffalo Bill's troupe and the Indians set up camp on the road from Arles to Nîmes as part of the “Wild West Show” tour. A show that the writer Frédéric Mistral and the manadier poet Folco Baroncelli will see. The latter will later accompany Indians and cowboys so that they can witness the sorting of the bulls and the abrivado in Petite Camargue. Subsequently, the marquis befriended a chief of the Sioux nation, which earned him the Indian name Zintkala waste, “faithful bird”.

From this friendship, there remain poems like “Red Ballad” but also an Indian chief's headdress and a pair of moccasins given to the marquis and which are kept by his descendants. And then, the Camargue and its wide open spaces, its herdsmen, its traditions also recall the United States, the land of cowboys and Indians.

The abbey church of Saint-Gilles inspired American architects

In mid-December 2019, the city of Saint-Gilles took advantage of its traditional end-of-year sound and light show to put the Saint-Gilles abbey church in the American spotlight. The opportunity to recall that the facade of this magnificent heritage, a jewel of Romanesque art, had inspired many American architects.

Thus, during the reconstruction in 1902 of the Saint-Barthelemew church in New York, the architect Stanford White was directly inspired by the abbey church of Saint-Gilles “the most beautiful architectural masterpiece in France”according to him. Local pride! Furthermore, the Nîmes architect Jean-Louis Pagès, who recently passed away, is known for being the one who designed the largest Catholic abbey in the United States for the Nobertine community of Orange.

The denim that brought jeans

Twilled from wool and silk, denim, this canvas manufactured from the 17th century in Languedoc and of course in Nîmes, a center of the textile industry at the time, was able to cross borders thanks to the flourishing cotton trade. It was in the United States that Levi Strauss, a fabric merchant, used this canvas to produce his first jeans.

A product from Nîmes which would have passed through the port of Genoa, hence the name… Durable 19th century work clothing which was popularized and had a much wider use than just dressing workers.

A Nîmes twinning with Fort Worth

This 16th city in the United States is the last to have twinned with Nîmes in September 2019. This allows schools and residents to have regular exchanges with this Texan city. A delegation from Nîmes also went to Fort Worth five years ago. The name of this city was given to a roundabout located at the intersection of Boulevard Allende and Avenue du Général Leclerc.