St. Joseph Catholic Church
Fort Davis, Jeff Davis County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Catholic clergy began serving residents of the Fort Davis area about 1872. Father Joseph Hoban was appointed pastor in 1876 and the First St Joseph Catholic Church building was erected in 1879. Father Hoban was followed by circuit-riding priest who regarded St. Joseph's as the central church of the region. Father Brocardus Eeken came to Fort Davis in 1892. He and fellow Carmelite friars traveled thousands of miles each year, ministering to the 18 churches and mission stations in the Trans-Pecos and Big Bend. A new church was consecrated in 1899. Many parishes, including those in Alpine and Marfa, were created from this parish. father Brocardus retired in 1935. St Joseph Catholic Church continues to serve a large and diverse congregation. (1999)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Catholic clergy began serving the Fort Davis area around 1872, and the first St. Joseph Church rose in 1879 under Father Joseph Hoban, who made it the central church of a vast region ministered by circuit-riding priests. From 1892, Carmelite friar Father Brocardus Eeken and his brethren rode thousands of miles a year to tend 18 churches and mission stations across the Trans-Pecos and Big Bend, and a new church was consecrated in 1899. Parishes in Alpine, Marfa, and beyond were carved from this mother congregation, which still serves a diverse community today.
Why it matters
St. Joseph's shows how a single frontier parish anchored Catholic life across the enormous, thinly settled Trans-Pecos, spawning the churches of far West Texas from one hub of circuit-riding devotion.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Father Joseph Hoban
- · Father Brocardus Eeken
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Jeff Davis County Courthouse
Fort Davis, TX
Erected in 1910–1911 to replace the county's original 1880 adobe courthouse, this Classical Revival building was designed by the Dallas firm of L. L. Thurman and Co. and built by a Louisville, Kentucky, contractor. A massive Doric portico fronts the concrete-and-stone structure, whose walls show alternating bands of locally quarried pink rusticated stone beneath a Beaux Arts clock tower fitted with a Seth Thomas timepiece. More than a century on, it still serves as the seat of Jeff Davis County government.
Jeff Davis County Jail
Fort Davis, TX
The town of Fort Davis grew up around the U.S. Army post established in 1854 to guard travelers on the San Antonio–El Paso Road, and it served as a county seat for both Presidio and, from 1887, Jeff Davis County. This crenellated, fortress-style jail was built in 1910–1911 alongside a new courthouse, designed by Dallas architect L.L. Thurman and disguised in scored plaster to resemble cut ashlar stone. Divided into an office, kitchen, jailer's quarters, and cell block, it held prisoners until 1978.
Smith-Carlton Adobe House
Fort Davis, TX
In 1873, a former Buffalo Soldier of the 24th U.S. Infantry named Archie Smith claimed 160 acres near Dolores Mountain in the Trans-Pecos country and raised an adobe home with native oak beams. Its vaulted room served as a family chapel open to neighbors of every denomination before the town's first Catholic church was built. Later owners, the Carltons, preserved and eventually restored the structure, which survives as the oldest home still lived in at Fort Davis.
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.