Plainview Baptist Church
Colorado City, Mitchell County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Begun as a mission of the Spade Community's Liberty Baptist Church, this fellowship met as early as 1906 in the Plainview Community Schoolhouse. On May 16, 1908, an organizational meeting was held to establish an independent congregation that became known as Plainview Baptist Church. Several members of the Liberty Baptist Church joined the new church at Plainview to provide leadership during its early years. Throughout its history, Plainview Baptist Church has maintained an active fellowship and has played an important role in the community's development. (1983)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Begun as a mission of the Spade community's Liberty Baptist Church, this fellowship was meeting in the Plainview Community Schoolhouse by 1906. On May 16, 1908, members gathered to organize an independent congregation, drawing leadership from the nearby Liberty church during its early years. The church went on to play an active role in the surrounding Mitchell County community.
Why it matters
Plainview Baptist reflects the way rural Texas communities took shape around their schoolhouses and churches in the early twentieth century.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Sites of Texas & Pacific Railway Depots
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Rail service reached Colorado City on April 16, 1881, when a Texas & Pacific supply train arrived to build the town's first depot, and cattle pens soon rose on donated land nearby. The railroad and stockyards made the town the great shipping and supply hub for the vast ranching country of West Texas and eastern New Mexico — sending out cattle, hides, wool, salt, and buffalo bones — until passenger service finally ended in 1967.
Texas & Pacific Railway
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When the Texas & Pacific Railway pushed through this valley in 1880, it turned a scatter of tents and dugouts into the "Cattle Capital of West Texas." Ranchers like Charles Goodnight and the great XIT had already trailed herds into a country where the last buffalo were vanishing and Texas Rangers guarded against raids. By April 1881 the railhead served some 350 residents with a county government, school, and newspaper, and soon shipped out thousands of cattle and freighted in the barbed wire and windmills that fenced the open range.
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Born in 1880 where the Texas & Pacific Railroad crossed the Colorado River, Colorado City boomed from a single dirt-floored tent store into the largest town between Fort Worth and El Paso, the shipping hub for the vast cattle ranches of West Texas and New Mexico. In its wild first decade it reputedly had more millionaires and more saloons than any other Texas town, kept in check by a company of Texas Rangers who made every man check his guns. Drought and the closing of the open range dimmed the glory, but the settlement earned its title as the 'Mother City of West Texas.'
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