First Baptist Church of Junction
Junction, Kimble County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In 1880, several local residents met at the courthouse to organize a Baptist church. The Rev. Z.M. Wells, pastor at Menardville (Menard), led the group and continued conducting services monthly. Four years later, the courthouse burned, and Junction residents erected a community church building, used on a rotating basis. In 1887, the Baptist congregation built a white, frame sanctuary on this site. Members built a Spanish-style building here in 1929 and then a brick structure in 1959. As the church has grown, it has also added other facilities. Over the years, members have served the community through mission work, worship, music and service programs. (2005)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In 1880, on the raw Texas Hill Country frontier, local residents gathered at the Kimble County courthouse to organize a Baptist church, guided by a circuit-riding pastor from nearby Menard. After the courthouse burned, the town shared a community building until the Baptists raised their own frame sanctuary here in 1887 — succeeded by a Spanish-style building in 1929 and a brick one in 1959. Through it all the congregation anchored Junction with worship, music, and mission work.
Why it matters
The church marks how frontier congregations became the first durable civic institutions in newly settled West Texas towns.
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Related people
- · Rev. Z.M. Wells
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
College Street Church of Christ
Junction, TX
In 1880, as the Hill Country town of Junction City took shape, A.J. Bush led seventeen men and women in forming a Church of Christ, meeting first in the county courthouse. Members raised their first sanctuary in 1882, and in 1883 John S. Durst began a 42-year ministry that spanned the congregation's growth. Successive buildings rose on this site in 1890 and 1929 as the church became a fixture of frontier Junction's religious life.
Site of First Livery Stable
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On a lot where a public corral had operated since 1877, John Allen built a livery stable in 1879 that quickly became the busiest spot in early Junction. It fed and housed visiting ranch teams, hired out horses and buggies, and drew men to gossip and trade. Owned by T. M. Hodges in its final years, the stable was made obsolete by automobiles in the 1920s.
First United Methodist Church of Junction
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Early Junction worshippers gathered under brush arbors, and by the 1870s an active Methodist Society hosted circuit-riding preachers like the famously combative 'Fighting Parson' Andrew Jackson Potter. Organized as a mission church in 1881, the congregation built a sanctuary and parsonage in 1889 and, in 1930, a Spanish mission-style church — its building committee including future Texas governor Coke R. Stevenson, who had grown up in the congregation.
Kimble County Courthouse
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