Bovina United Methodist Church
Bovina, Parmer County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The town of Bovina was organized in the early 20th century in the heart of the "XIT" Ranch on the Pecos Valley Railway. Soon after its establishment, a Methodist church was founded with nine charter members. The Rev. V. H. Trammell, who served as pastor from 1905 until 1908, helped organize the congregation and held services one Sunday a month. Members of the Bovina Methodist Church first met in a one-room schoolhouse. In 1910, during the pastorate of the Rev. J. A. Sweeney (d. 1919), the congregation constructed its first sanctuary across the street from this site. Much of the money raised to help build the structure came from cowboys on area ranches. The church hired its first full-time pastor during the 1940s. As the oldest Methodist congregation in Parmer County, Bovina Methodist Church has a long history of providing service and leadership to the community and the surrounding farming and ranching area. With its emphasis on Christian education, youth ministry, and music, the congregation continues to uphold the ideals and traditions of its founders. (1985)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Bovina grew up in the early twentieth century in the heart of the vast XIT Ranch, strung along the Pecos Valley Railway on the Texas High Plains. Soon after the town's founding, a Methodist congregation of nine charter members took shape, meeting in a one-room schoolhouse and building its first sanctuary in 1910 with money raised largely from area cowboys. As the oldest Methodist church in Parmer County, it grew alongside the surrounding farming and ranching community.
Why it matters
The church's cowboy-funded beginnings tie it to the breakup of the legendary XIT Ranch, when railroads and homesteaders transformed open range into settled farm-and-ranch towns on the Llano Estacado.
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Themes & tags
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Bovina began as the Hay Hook Line Camp of the legendary XIT Ranch, the three-million-acre spread Texas granted in payment for building its state capitol. When the Pecos & Northern Texas Railroad reached the site in 1898, cattle poured onto rail cars bound for eastern markets, and for a time this was one of the largest shipping points in the nation — cowhands called it "Bull Town" before the town chose the name Bovina in 1899. From a frontier line camp it grew into the market center of a rich irrigated-farming county.
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