The Country Campus Journal functioned as the paper of Country Campus, Texas. The first edition was released on July 1, 1948, with the intention to publish every week of the school term on Thursday.

The Journal was produced by a team of staff and photoengravers, including a Lansden, McCulloch, Johnson, and Campbell. James N. Roebuck was the director of Photoengraving.

One repeating front-page column “Over the Clothesline” provided witty commentary and insight on the happenings of Country Campus, Sam Houston State Teacher's College (SHSTC), and the affairs of journal itself. It was written by George Mears.

In January of 1949, O.B. Lee, editor for the Houstonian, and Joe Morgan, Journalism major and reporter for the Houstonian, took over direction of the Country Campus Journal.

In September of 1943, the War Department opened Huntsville Alien Internment Camp, more commonly called “Camp Huntsville.” It was one of nearly seventy prisioner of war (POW) camps in Texas, which were used in part to fill the labor gap left by military enrollment and conscription.

The camp, built to house 4,800 men, included housing and medical facilities, a barbershop, a laundry, a bakery, a cafeteria, a commissary, a gymnasium, a guardhouse, a clothing shop, a motor pool, and a fire station. The camp was shut down in January of 1946 and the German POWs repatriated to Germany. Japanese POWs were enrolled in re-education programs on topics such as American democracy, civil liberties, and constitutional government, taught with the help of SHSTC professors. These were the nation’s only re-education programs for Japanese POWs.

The end of World War II in 1945 brought an era of postwar growth for SHSTC (now Sam Houston State University). The return of those away at war combined with the passing of the G.I. Bill, which provided financial assistance to veterans to attend college, brought a new flood of students. In 1946-47, enrollment broke all previous records, with 1,853 students, 952 being veterans, in attendance.

As a result, SHSTC faced a housing crisis. This caused SHSTC president Harmon Lowan to seek an unconventional solution; he convinced the state to let him “purchase” the recently vacated Camp Huntsville for one dollar. The 405 existing structures were adapted to serve as dormitories, classrooms, recreational facilities, and offices for SHSTC’s “Country Campus.”

Country Campus quickly became Walker County’s second most popular center. A post office was established in August of 1948 under post-mistress R. H. Maxwell, and with that, the address became Country Campus, Texas, instead of Country Campus, Huntsville, Texas. Data from the Country Campus Journals reveal a rapidly growing community in 1948, with 640 residents in the spring semester to 769 in the summer semester, 205 of which were children. In 1949, the community reported a population of 1,000.

During its peak, Country Campus included a student union building, a nusery, a gymnasium, a grocery store, a fire station, a chapel, a laundry, a baseball diamond, a theater, riding stables, tennis, croquet, and volleyball courts, a church, a lake to fish in, a golf course, and a library. It additionally had a heavy equipment shop, a tin shop, a paint shop, and a meat packing and storage plant.

In the 1950s, the population began to decline again, halving by 1952. The post office closed in 1964, and by 1968, the population had dropped to 121. In 1972, the community only had sixty inhabitants. In 1971, Country Campus went through a cleanup process which dismantled or sold all buildings on the site except for caretaker accommodations or structures for Sam Houston State University's (SHSU's) operations on-site.

By the 1980s, Country Campus had become a multi-use complex with a university farm and ranch operation used by the SHSU agricultural department, a golf course, and an observatory.

In 1993, Country Campus was sold to SHSU alumni Samuel Calhoun Dominey and the ranch operation and observatory were moved to university land off Highway 75-North.

The nine-hole golf course built on the site in 1948 remained open until 2017.