St. John's Methodist Church
Stamford, Jones County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Built 1910 in pastorate of Dr. Robert Goodrich, for congregation founded 1900 in Sledge Hall, under Rev. S. Gay. With 100' tower, long the tallest church between Dallas and El Paso. Served community of Old Stamford College (now McMurry). Has had 33 pastors up to 1964. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark, 1964.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Founded in 1900 in Stamford's Sledge Hall, this Methodist congregation built its permanent home in 1910 during Dr. Robert Goodrich's pastorate. Its 100-foot tower stood for years as the tallest church steeple between Dallas and El Paso, a landmark on the West Texas plains. The church served the community around Old Stamford College, the institution that grew into McMurry.
Why it matters
A soaring steeple on the open plains, the church marks how faith and education anchored the raw new towns of early-twentieth-century West Texas.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In 1900, the town of Stamford was barely a town at all. It grew up that year along a new railroad line pushing across the rolling ranch country of Jones County, in the part of West Texas where cattle outfits had run the land for a generation. Towns like this appeared almost overnight: a depot, a few stores, lots laid out on the prairie, and settlers hoping the rails would bring them a future.
Churches were among the first institutions such towns built, and often the most lasting. Before a congregation could afford its own building, it met wherever it could. Stamford's Methodists first gathered in Sledge Hall, a borrowed space in a town still finding its shape.
By 1910 the picture had changed. Stamford had settled in as a trading and shipping center for the surrounding farms and ranches, and it had a college. Across Texas in those years, church denominations were founding schools in young towns, betting that education would build both the faith and the prosperity of the frontier.
Nationally, the Progressive Era was a time of confidence in institutions: schools, churches, civic clubs, and public improvements. In a new West Texas town, putting up a large brick church with a soaring tower was a statement that the community meant to stay.
People & events
The congregation started in 1900 under the Rev. S. Gay, gathering in Sledge Hall while Stamford itself was still being built. Frontier Methodism relied on preachers like him to hold a small, scattered flock together until it could support a permanent home.
That home came ten years later, during the pastorate of Dr. Robert Goodrich. Building it in 1910 meant raising money from a young community, which made the finished church a shared achievement as much as a place of worship.
The building's most striking feature was its 100-foot tower. For years it was counted the tallest church between Dallas and El Paso, a stretch of hundreds of miles of prairie, ranchland, and small towns. On a landscape this flat and open, a tower like that could be seen from a long way off, a landmark for travelers as well as for worshippers.
The church also served the community around Stamford College, the Methodist school that the marker calls the forerunner of McMurry. Students, faculty, and townspeople shared the pews. Through 1964 the congregation had been led by 33 pastors, a steady line of ministers under Methodism's itinerant system, and that year the building was designated a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark.
Its place in the American story
St. John's tells a story repeated in hundreds of American towns founded along the railroads: first the tracks, then the churches and schools, and with them the sense of permanence that turned a townsite into a community.
Methodism in particular grew up with the American frontier. Its circuit riders and rotating pastors were built for thinly settled country, and Methodist schools spread across the South and West as the denomination worked to educate the next generation of leaders and ministers.
The link to Stamford College and McMurry reflects a broader pattern. Many church colleges founded in young towns struggled, closed, merged, or moved, yet their mission often carried on under another name. A building like this outlasts the institutions around it and holds the memory of those early ambitions.
The tower's old title, tallest church between Dallas and El Paso, captures something about the West Texas imagination: in wide-open country, people built high so their faith and their hopes could be seen.
If you visit
Look up first. The tower was the building's great boast, and it is worth imagining what it looked like when the town around it was new and the horizon was nearly empty in every direction.
Then take in the rest of the 1910 building and think about the effort it took for a ten-year-old town to put up a church on this scale. The historical marker nearby tells the story in brief. Keep in mind that this is a working house of worship, so be respectful of services and private gatherings.
Stamford makes a good stop on a West Texas road trip through ranch country. The town is best known for the Texas Cowboy Reunion, a long-running rodeo tradition, and the drive through Jones County shows you the open, rolling landscape that made that 100-foot tower so remarkable.
Pair it with a visit to Abilene, a short drive to the south, where McMurry University carries on the Methodist educational tradition this church once served.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Dr. Robert Goodrich
- · Rev. S. Gay
Themes & tags
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