Bloys Camp Meeting
Fort Davis vicinity, Jeff Davis County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Held each year since 1890. Founded by Rev. W. B. Bloys, a Presbyterian. His camp pulpit was an Arbuckle Coffee crate. First campers, 48 people from remote ranches and towns, slept in tents, wagons. Family groups had chuck-box meals, sharing with guests. Some 1,500 attend mid-August meetings today. Still nothing is ever sold in camp. Baptists, Disciples of Christ, Methodists and Presbyterians incorporated the Cowboys' Camp Meeting in 1902. Site, Skillman Grove, has been a camp ground since the 1850s. Elevation is about 6,000 feet.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Held every August since 1890, this interdenominational gathering was founded by Presbyterian minister Rev. W. B. Bloys, who preached from a pulpit made of an Arbuckle Coffee crate to 48 people camped in tents and wagons at Skillman Grove, a campground since the 1850s. Ranch families brought chuck-box meals and shared them with guests, and in 1902 Baptists, Disciples of Christ, Methodists, and Presbyterians formally incorporated the Cowboys' Camp Meeting. Some 1,500 people now attend the mid-August meetings, where—by tradition—nothing has ever been sold in camp.
Why it matters
The Bloys Camp Meeting is a living survival of the frontier camp-meeting tradition, binding scattered ranch families of the remote Davis Mountains into a community of faith that has endured, unbroken and uncommercialized, for well over a century.
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Related people
- · Rev. W. B. Bloys
Related events
- · Incorporation of the Cowboys' Camp Meeting (1902)
Themes & tags
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