Buffalo Gap College
Buffalo Gap, Taylor County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Founded 1885 by Presbyterian Church, institution previously operated as a high school. In peak year, over 300 pupils, many from distant places, attended. First president was W. H. White. College had greatest success under J. M. Wagstaff. Presidents later were J. W. Melton, R. W. Benge, E. W. Doran, J. N. Ellis, John Collier, J. B. Clay and (again) W. H. White. The two-story, red sandstone building had four classrooms on the first floor, an auditorium on the second, and a belfry. The curriculum included courses in Latin, Greek, Christian evidence, physics, calculus, and music. (1968)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Founded in 1885 by the Presbyterian Church, Buffalo Gap College grew out of an earlier high school and at its peak drew more than 300 students, some from far away. Its two-story red sandstone building housed classrooms, an auditorium, and a belfry, and offered a rigorous classical curriculum of Latin, Greek, physics, calculus, and music. The college enjoyed its greatest success under president J. M. Wagstaff.
Why it matters
It reflects the 19th-century wave of church-founded frontier colleges that carried higher learning into small Western towns before public education took hold.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · W. H. White
- · J. M. Wagstaff
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Dyess Elementary School
Abilene, TX
On January 21, 1963, Dyess Elementary became the first school in the Abilene Independent School District to integrate, enrolling 38 African American children — most from military families at Dyess Air Force Base who had been bused past this closer school to the segregated Woodson School. Texas had tried to stall desegregation with House Bill 65, but after the state attorney general declared it unconstitutional in 1962 and the Defense Department threatened to cut funding, the district's board voted unanimously to begin. Full integration of Abilene's schools followed step by step, completed only in 1970.
Abilene State School
Abilene, TX
Authorized by the Texas Legislature in 1899 and opened in 1904, this Abilene institution began as a center devoted to the study and treatment of epilepsy. Largely self-sufficient, it raised its own crops and livestock on surrounding land, and under long-serving superintendent Dr. T. B. Bass it became a site of notable medical research. By the mid-twentieth century it had evolved into a residential facility caring for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
McMurry College
Abilene, TX
Between 1840 and 1920 Texas Methodists founded nearly eighty colleges, and after several in the Northwest Texas Conference closed, the Rev. James Winford Hunt led a drive to build a new one in Abilene. A former newspaperman turned circuit-riding minister, Hunt rallied community support and a 1921 fund drive timed to a visit by Bishop William Fletcher McMurry, for whom the school was named. Chartered that November, McMurry College opened its doors in September 1923.
Sacred Heart Catholic Church
Abilene, TX
Sacred Heart began as a mission in the 1880s, with priests riding the train from Weatherford to say Mass in Abilene homes and public halls before the Bishop of Dallas made it a parish in 1891. It served as the mother church for Catholicism across the surrounding region and opened St. Joseph's Academy in 1916. The present Spanish colonial revival church, designed by San Antonio architect Leo M. J. Dielmann and finished in 1931, is counted the best-preserved pre-1940s religious building in Abilene.