Iowa Park Lodge No. 713, A.F. & A.M.
Iowa Park, Wichita County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The town of Iowa Park was platted in 1888 on the route of the Fort Worth and Denver City Railroad. A Masonic Lodge was also being organized in Iowa Park, and in 1891 a warrant of dispensation was granted by the Grand Lodge of Texas, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons. Iowa Park Lodge No. 713 received its charter in December 1891. A building owned by Kriedler and Windle served as the first lodge hall until 1892 when Birk Hall was secured as a meeting place. In 1896 the second floor of the First National Bank building was obtained for lodge meetings. The organization continued to meet in the bank building until 1969 when the lodge completed a building at 700 West Washington Street. Iowa Park Lodge members maintain a strong tradition of supporting community education, and have laid cornerstones for local public schools in 1901 and 1923. An award named for Republic of Texas President Mirabeau B. Lamar has been given annually to a deserving high school student. Many charitable causes have received assistance from the Iowa Park Masons, who continue to serve the community as they have for more than a century. (1997)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
When Iowa Park was platted in 1888 along the Fort Worth and Denver City Railroad, its Masons organized alongside the new town, receiving their charter as Lodge No. 713 in December 1891. The lodge met above a bank for decades before building its own hall in 1969, all the while championing local schools — laying cornerstones in 1901 and 1923 and endowing an annual student award. Its members have supported the community's charitable and educational life for well over a century.
Why it matters
Fraternal lodges like this were central to civic life in railroad-era Texas towns, quietly funding schools and good works as communities took shape.
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Related people
- · Mirabeau B. Lamar
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Iowa Park Consolidated Independent School District
Iowa Park, TX
Iowa Park raised its first schoolhouse in 1888, just after the town was platted, and became an independent district in 1899. Through brick schoolhouses, the 1924 W. F. George High School, and New Deal-funded construction, the district grew alongside the town, absorbing five rural districts in 1941 and spreading across new campuses in the postwar decades. From a single room it expanded to five campuses serving more than 2,000 students.
City View School
Wichita Falls, TX
Founded in 1889 as Common School District No. 8, this rural school was renamed by its own students for the sweeping view of Wichita Falls from its first hilltop site. When it moved in 1926, its new mission-revival building earned the nickname "The Alamo." Steady growth carried it to independent school district status in 1961, and it remains a fixture of its community more than a century after those students chose its name.
Site of Valley View School
Kamay, TX
Valley View School grew out of two 1897 country schools that merged in 1918, just as the 1918 discovery of the Kemp-Munger-Allen oil field and new irrigation lakes flooded rural Wichita County with families. Enrollment swelled to nearly 600 by the late 1930s, and the district built and rebuilt to keep pace. As farm mechanization and the oil industry's decline thinned the population, the district consolidated with Iowa Park in 1970 and its buildings were eventually dismantled.
Zenobia Trimble
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Raised in an Alabama foster home, Zenobia Estelle Trimble married C. C. Trimble and settled in Wichita Falls, where she became a pillar of the city's Black community. While her husband served as principal of Booker T. Washington School, she taught alongside him and helped launch its science classes, and for 38 years she cared for children at the "Colored Day Nursery" serving working mothers. Her decades of service to schoolchildren, young women, and the underprivileged earned lasting community respect.