On a recent windy November evening, the town’s sheriff and a handful of his deputies, clad in duster coats and Stetson hats, smoked on the porch outside the county jail, their Colt revolvers holstered and their Winchester rifles stowed away.
The men knew they were powerless against the trouble headed their way.
On the opposite side of the muddy main street, a crowd gathered inside one of the town’s two saloons. Townspeople cheered a troupe of women who were line dancing to country music in matching red-checkered shirts, cowboy boots and hats.
The revelers knew this might be their last hoedown.
For all its trappings of the Wild West, this town was nowhere near Dodge City or Deadwood or the O.K. Corral. The biggest giveaways to its actual location: The cowboys and cowgirls were all speaking German and eating bockwurst (and all the guns were props).
Welcome to Old Texas Town, where “it’s possible to switch off, have fun, enjoy a dance or two and simply forget all the worries and struggles of the day,” said Ralf Keber, 68, who goes by Jack Hunter and plays the mayor.
The little make-believe hamlet, thousands of miles and 150 years from the locales that inspired it, takes up about an acre and a half, and is nestled between a gym, a fast-food restaurant and a discount supermarket on the outskirts of Berlin.
But the town’s days appear numbered. Mr. Keber, a retired surveyor, and the nearly four dozen remaining members of the hobby club that runs this pretend patch of the American frontier, will likely have to find other ways to escape the daily grind.
After nearly six decades in existence in its current spot, Old Texas Town, about the size of a movie set, is threatened by its landlord, who wants to force this group of settlers off their land to develop it. Where the sheriff’s office, saloon, cantina, church, courtroom, cemetery, bank and a faithful reproduction of the Alamo now stand, a developer plans to build a modern data processing center.
Over the past six months, the hobbyists have protested eviction by demonstrating in front of Brandenburg Gate and pleading with city officials, but they will likely be forced to give into change.
The potential closing of this life-size model Western town comes as property prices in Berlin have soared and as the sort of disused, forgotten spaces, where pioneers of all stripes have created their own worlds, continue to vanish.
Although it attracts a starkly different demographic, the adult playground that is Old Texas Town is not so different from a number of the techno clubs, underground bars and outré art spaces — that for decades imbued Berlin with its anything-goes vibe — that have been forced to shut down.
The expected demise and demolition of Old Texas Town also comes as both the club members, and a peculiar German love for the American West, are growing old.
Many of the mostly retirement-age men and women who now run the club got hooked because of a series of German-language books, published over a hundred years ago, that glorified the lives of cowboys and Native Americans. The club’s leaders are from a generation of postwar Boomers who could celebrate an idealistic frontier without worrying too much about the historical injustices that make such cosplay unpalatable to many younger Germans.
Still, it remains a popular spot, open to the public the first Saturday of every month and available to rent for weddings and other private events.
On a recent Saturday, around 200 guests — lots wearing cowboy hats, vests and boots — came to explore. Many of the nearly two dozen clapboard buildings that make up the small town are filled with old furniture, antique guns and other trinkets roughly contemporaneous with American frontier life. A small museum features Native American arts.
The club’s aim is to show a snapshot of life in America in the years that followed the American Civil War. Throughout the evening, members role-played as characters one would expect to stumble across in a Western movie, though both Union and Confederate uniforms are still common attire as well.
Behind the counter at the Bank of Texas, Elke Andres, 73, wearing a velour-and-lace dress, cheerfully greeted customers. Ms. Andres, who goes by Liz Andrews in town, was working as a theater costume designer when she first discovered Old Texas Town. Barring vacations, she said, she hasn’t missed a monthly gathering since 1976.
“It’s very difficult to imagine a life without this place,” she said. “The town, and all the people, have been a big part of my life and the memories of my children and my grandchildren.”
After their lease was terminated early this year, the members were meant to vacate the property and hand it over to the landowners by Aug. 31. But faced with tearing down their own buildings and hanging up their boots forever, the townspeople grew ornery and refused, continuing their monthly open-to-all parties, which kick off with a ceremonial gun salute and military parade.
In response, the landowners filed an eviction lawsuit. Attorneys on both sides are now locked in negotiations over whether Old Texas Town has any kind of future, with some of the cowhands hoping for at least a short lease extension.
Clad in a raccoon-fur hat of the sort favored by trappers, Rolf Müller, 62, a power plant engineer from Berlin, was, for the meantime, proudly standing his ground inside the Alamo, where he treated visitors to a passionate presentation about the club’s history.
Founded on the eve of World War II, the club expanded in the late 1960s, when the German electronics company Siemens leased them land on which to build the town. It became a magnet for U.S. soldiers stationed close by, who both brought life to the many parties and gave it a degree of legitimacy, at least in the minds of the German hobbyists.
That the town may disappear forever seems to have added an urgency to experience it, including among younger Germans.
Rika Seiberlich, 21, who for Saturday’s dance wore a green satin dress that she had to remember to lift when walking, said she feared the town, which she had only recently discovered, would not survive.
“We will all lose something so light and fun if the town is forced to shut,” she said.
Christopher F. Schuetze is a reporter for The Times based in Berlin, covering politics, society and culture in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
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