The Community Church
Kermit, Winkler County, Texas
Marker Inscription
50 years of camp meetings, circuit riders, singings and Sunday Schools at ranches or schoolhouses filled settlers' religious needs. In 1928, when this church was organized, its sanctuary was 1910 courthouse, bought for a dollar. Present edifice--first brick building in Kermit--is on site of that first church, and was built by generous ranchers after oil discovery. Dedicated 1938. First resident pastor was C. Y. Butler. (1966)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
For fifty years West Texas settlers met their religious needs through camp meetings, circuit riders, and singings held at ranches and schoolhouses. When this church was organized in 1928, it worshiped in Kermit's old 1910 courthouse, bought for a single dollar. After oil transformed the region, generous ranchers built the present brick edifice — the first brick building in Kermit — on the site of that first church, dedicating it in 1938.
Why it matters
The leap from courthouse-turned-chapel to the town's first brick church captures how an oil strike could rapidly rebuild a remote frontier community's institutions almost overnight.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · C. Y. Butler
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Winkler County
Kermit, TX
Carved from Tom Green County and created in 1887, Winkler County waited until 1910 to fully organize, taking shape as a ranching frontier in far West Texas. It honors C. M. Winkler, a nineteenth-century statesman, soldier, and jurist, and centers on its seat at Kermit. Cattle grazing gave way, in time, to the petroleum wealth that came to define the region.
Kermit
Kermit, TX
Kermit rose on the far West Texas plains as the seat of Winkler County, organized in 1910 in ranch country near the New Mexico line. The town carries an unusual namesake: Kermit Roosevelt, son of President Theodore Roosevelt, who had visited a nearby ranch. What began as a ranching center was transformed by the discovery of oil and gas, making Winkler one of the state's leading energy-producing counties.
Old Duval Townsite
Kermit, TX
Winkler County's first post office opened near here in 1908 on the John Howe ranch, serving 300 people with mail twice a week. The Pueblo Investment Company promoted the Duval townsite nationwide, opening it in March 1910 with free lots, a picnic, and a cowboy tournament—but when Kermit won the county seat, Duval withered. After oil was struck in 1928 its townsite rights were canceled, leaving the ownership of many 1910 lots tangled to this day.
Wink
Wink, TX
The land beneath Wink was Comanche country until 1874, then range for the sprawling "W" cattle ranch. Everything changed in 1926, when Roy Westbrook struck oil in the Permian Basin just north of here and a town materialized almost overnight, swelling with ten to twenty thousand fortune-seekers. Named for Confederate officer C. M. Winkler, Wink became a raw emblem of West Texas's headlong rush from open range to oil derricks.