Mission Mary
Balmorhea, Reeves County, Texas
Marker Inscription
MISSION MARY FROM 1895 TO 1935, FATHER NICHOLAS BROCARDUS EIKEN SERVED SEVERAL MISSION STATIONS IN THIS REGION, INCLUDING MISSION MARY, ESTABLISHED BY 1902 IN THE CALERA COMMUNITY. THE ORIGINAL ADOBE AND RUBBLE SANCTUARY WAS BUILT IN 1925 AND FEATURED PILLARS, WHICH WERE REMOVED WHEN THE BUILDING WAS PLASTERED IN THE 1940s. THE RECTANGULAR PLAN CHURCH FEATURES A BELL TOWER AND A LOW PITCH ROOF WITH EXPOSED RAFTER TAILS. TODAY, MOST OF THE AREA’S SMALL MISSIONS HAVE DISAPPEARED, AS HAS CALERA. MISSION MARY STANDS AS A MONUMENT TO AREA SETTLEMENTS AND TO THE CHURCHES AND THE RESIDENTS THEY SERVED. RECORDED TEXAS HISTORIC LANDMARK – 2010
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
From 1895 to 1935 Father Nicholas Brocardus Eiken served scattered mission stations across this remote corner of far West Texas, among them Mission Mary, established by 1902 in the Calera community. The original adobe-and-rubble sanctuary was raised in 1925, its pillars later removed when the walls were plastered in the 1940s, and the little church still stands with its bell tower and exposed rafter tails. Most of the area's small missions — and the town of Calera itself — have since vanished.
Why it matters
Mission Mary is a surviving witness to the vanished rural settlements and the itinerant priests who ministered to the Catholic families of the West Texas frontier.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Nicholas Brocardus Eiken
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
San Solomon Spring
Toyhavale, TX
In the dry country of far West Texas, a single strong spring could decide who lived where. The Mescalero Apaches watered corn and peaches here, and by 1856 soldiers out of Fort Davis knew it as "Head Spring" before Mexican settlers gave it the name it carries today. In 1871 Miller, Lyles, and Murphy turned that flow into large-scale commercial irrigation, with Murphy digging the first canals — the beginning of farming that the spring still feeds.
Wild Rose Pass
Fort Davis, TX
Long before wagons rolled through, an Indian trail wound through these mountains along the floor of Limpia Canyon. To escape flash floods, travelers on the San Antonio–El Paso Road — emigrants, U.S. troops, and supply and mail trains — climbed instead to this higher gap, which they named for the wild roses that grew there. It became a landmark of the mid-19th-century overland route across far West Texas.
Granado Mountain
Fort Davis, TX
This 6,076-foot peak was long known as Granado Mountain for Trinidad Granado (1868–1958), a rancher whose spread lay at its base. The tract had first been acquired from the State of Texas in 1876 by Belgian-born settler Anton Diedrick Dutchover, a Mexican War veteran and civilian stock herder at Fort Davis, whose daughter Dorothea married Granado in 1890. Granado built his ranch on land bought in 1910, and in 1964 Governor John Connally proclaimed the peak renamed Barry Scobee Mountain.
Barry Scobee Mountain
Fort Davis, TX
This 6,300-foot peak overlooking Fort Davis served from the 1850s to the 1880s as a campground and lookout for soldiers, mail coaches, freighters, and emigrants crossing the Trans-Pecos, and it saw the area's last Indian raid in 1881. In 1964 Governor John Connally named it for Barry Scobee, a writer and historian whose efforts helped preserve old Fort Davis.