The loam- an loess-rich Glan valley floor, as well as the heights stretching towards Roth, make for outstanding conditions for agriculture.

The mountain slopes on the Glan's left bank and the Odenbach's right – a rural cadastral area known as “Igelsbach” (literally “Hedgehog’s Brook”) – offered the best chances for winegrowing, which was mentioned as early as 893.

The woodlands, which still make up roughly one third of the municipal area, served the local farmers before the First World War as a further support for their endeavours.

Foremost among its boons to them was of course firewood for private use, but it was also useful for tanbark harvesting, and it yielded the wood that was needed for building and woodworking.

Finds of ancient coins show that there was uninterrupted settlement here in the transitional period between Celtic and Roman times.

Unearthed during clearing work in the cadastral area known as “Im Neuberg” was one of the most important troves: some 150 gold coins attributed to the East Celtic tribe of the Leuker.

[5] After the Franks had finished taking the land, a Merovingian prince donated the lordship over St. Medard to the Bishopric of Verdun on the Meuse sometime about the year 600.

To strengthen the claim to the lordship, a moated castle was built on the gore of land at the Odenbach's mouth in the same century, although its buildings were torn down in the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) by Spanish occupiers.

This state in turn met its end in 1798 after French Revolutionary troops had occupied the German lands on the Rhine’s left bank.

Administratively, Odenbach formed together with Adenbach, Ginsweiler, Reiffelbach and Schmittweiler a mairie (“mayoralty”) belonging to the Canton of Lauterecken, the Arrondissement of Kaiserslautern and the Department of Mont-Tonnerre (or Donnersberg in German).

After a transitional time, Odenbach was grouped into the bayerischer Rheinkreis, later known as Rheinpfalz (“Rhenish Palatinate”), an exclave of the Kingdom of Bavaria in 1816 with the rank of Bürgermeisterei (“mayoralty”).

In the latter case, they were broken down as follows: one innkeeper, twelve craftsmen, fourteen farmers, eleven winegrowers, five day labourers, two herdsmen and two gatekeepers.

This level was held steady only by the outflow of people, both to German cities and industrial centres and overseas, mainly to the United States.

[12] In Prüm Abbey’s 893 directory of holdings, the Prümer Urbar, a church in Odenbach was mentioned for the first time, one consecrated to Saint Peter.

After the great fire of 1733, the Palatinate-Zweibrücken Judenschultheiß (“reeve of the Jews”) Salomon Meyer acquired a burnt-out spot on Kirchhofstraße where he built a prayer parlour.

After Meyer's death, his widow sold the building in 1802 to the Jewish religious community, who used it for worship until 1938, the time of Kristallnacht.

These remnants of the Weiherturm (“Pond Tower”) are all that is left of a 12th-century moated castle, Burg Odenbach, which is said to be the municipality's defining landmark.

Investigations in the early 1980s yielded the finding that old building work stretched from the tower along the Weiherpfad (path) almost all the way to Hauptstraße (“Main Street”).

As the municipality's pride and a symbol of its self-assurance at that time, it served in earlier years not only as the administrative centre but also as the hub of village life, with weddings and other occasions being celebrated there.

In 1906, the brothers Leo and Emanuel Löb acquired the building, tore it down and in its stead built the house that now stands.

Thus arose a new one in 1788-1789, on the same spot, a two-storey Classicist building designed by Palatinate-Zweibrücken’s “countryside and boulevard director” (Land- und Chausseedirektor) Gerhard Friedrich Wahl, which is striking for its tight geometric shapes and its simplicity.

Also belonging to the house were a barn, a stable, a bakehouse and an open shed whose roof rests on two wooden pillars, the whole built in a square shape so that a closed yard was formed within.

In the early 1960s, the district savings bank (Kreissparkasse) of Kusel acquired the property and set up commercial premises on the ground floor, which were festively dedicated and opened to the public on 1 December 1965.

After the village youth hold a parade, the focus shifts to the kermis square (Kerbeplatz), where the Straußpredigt, a kind of “sermon”, is delivered.

Mined at the coalpits around Odenbach and Roth, galleries in the Blochersberg, Igelsgraben, Pickelwiese, Hagelkreuz and Schinn in the years from 1821 to 1880 were all together 583 154 t of coal.

A report about the coal yield from the Carlsgrube colliery, which lay in the rural cadastral area called “In Dämm” and was run privately from 1788 to 1865, is unavailable.

The Glanmühle, which was mentioned in a document as early as 1387, and which was the estate mill for Odenbach, Adenbach, Ginsweiler, Cronenberg, Medard, Becherbach, Gangloff and Reiffelbach, was shut down for good after an eventful history in 1938.

The yellow-veined sandstone from the cadastral area known as “In der Hinterwies” was easy to work and in demand for state buildings, town halls, schoolhouses, business premises and villas.

[28] Duke Alexander of Palatinate-Zweibrücken issued an edict in 1505 requiring his subjects to send their children to school to learn to read and write, but not beyond the age of 13 (in early-16th-century German: “…zu schulen thun laßen lern schreiben und leßen, aber nit über XIII jare des schulers alters…”).

Since a third teaching post needed to be filled by 1862, the municipality acquired a building on Grabenstraße that, after remodelling, came to be known as the Kleines Schulhaus – “Little Schoolhouse”.