The Methodist Church in Chico

Chico, TX

Robert Calvin Mount came from Tennessee to Texas in 1855 and helped organize the brand-new Wise County, winning election as its first tax assessor-collector in 1856. During the Civil War he served as a first lieutenant in Blythe's militia, and in 1874 he built a fort-like rock house near Chico as protection on a still-dangerous frontier. He is remembered as one of the county's founding pioneers.

Chico, TX

This cemetery dates to September 1866 and the killing of Mrs. John S. Babb by Comanches, an attack that also carried off two of her children, Dot and Bianca, into a captivity that lasted two years before their father recovered them. It marks the violent frontier that North Texas remained in the years just after the Civil War, when raids and captivities were a constant fear for settling families.

Bridgeport, TX

After the Rock Island Railroad spurred Bridgeport's growth in 1893, the Weakley family and a handful of others organized a Presbyterian congregation, officially chartering twelve members in 1898 and buying two lots from the town company for a single dollar. A dignified Carpenter Gothic church rose that year. Women organized almost immediately, and charter member Martha Green Weakley traveled the region delivering speeches on Christian education and church organization.

Bridgeport, TX

In June 1841, President Mirabeau B. Lamar dispatched an expedition of 321 merchants, engineers, and soldiers to extend the Republic of Texas' reach toward Santa Fe, then held by Mexico. Struggling through the dense Western Cross Timbers, the men burned much of their gear to move faster and forded the West Fork of the Trinity near this site that July. They were captured before reaching Santa Fe and marched to prison in Mexico City. One survivor, surveyor William Hudson Hunt, later settled in Wise County, where he had spotted the region's ranching promise.