Frontier, gold rush, and the trails west.
8,204 markers in this collection — showing 2,521–2,580.
Gonzales, TX
A mile and a half from here, on October 2, 1835, Texan colonists under Col. John H. Moore fired a small cannon at Mexican troops — the opening shot of the Texas Revolution. The confrontation at Gonzales over that very cannon crystallized the colonists' defiance and launched the fight for Texas independence.
Sherman, TX
When the Texas Legislature created Grayson County in 1846, it named the seat for Sidney Sherman, a hero of San Jacinto. Commissioners chose this spot on the old Cherokee Trail near an important crossing at Preston Bend, and the first courthouse was finished in 1847—celebrated with a Fourth of July barbecue, a barrel of whiskey, music, and dancing. But this "bald prairie" lacked water and wood, so in 1848 legislators arranged to move the townsite five miles east to its present location.
Snyder, TX
Built in 1907-08 beside Deep Creek, where the trail of Gen. Ranald Mackenzie's U.S. Cavalry had once run, this Snyder landmark housed the First State Bank & Trust Co., an early bank serving West Texas cattlemen and ranchers. It closed during the depression year of 1931 and afterward sheltered many tenants, including the local newspaper. Its Ionic-columned Greek Revival exterior survives unchanged from the day it was built.
Three Rivers, TX
This building housed the First State Bank and the office of C. R. Tips, who founded the city of Three Rivers in 1914. As the town's early financial and business center, it anchored the young community during its founding years in the South Texas brush country. It stands as a tangible link to the man and the moment that put Three Rivers on the map.
Jones Township, PA · est. 1950
In 1920, the Pennsylvania Game Commission used money raised entirely from hunting-license fees to buy 6,288 acres of Elk County forest — the first tract in what would become the state's vast State Game Lands system. The purchase reflected a Progressive-Era conviction that wildlife and wild country were public resources worth conserving for everyone, and that hunters themselves should foot the bill. From this single Elk County parcel grew a statewide network now covering well over a million acres.
Waco, TX
Deeded to Waco's citizens in 1852, First Street Cemetery became the growing town's oldest public burial ground, holding veterans and members of numerous fraternal orders. Left unfenced and poorly recorded, its graves were dug in overlapping tiers, and a later campground and construction disturbed the dead—prompting excavations, reinterments, and a formal rededication. Today it is recognized as a Historic Texas Cemetery and State Antiquities Landmark.
Panhandle, TX
On the treeless expanse of the Texas Panhandle, a single bois d'arc planted by settler Thomas Cree at his dugout home in 1888 became a landmark and a good-luck talisman for pioneers enduring drought, blizzards, and blistering heat. Cree's original tree lived until the 1970s, and in 1990 Carson County residents planted a successor on the spot to honor the region's earliest homesteaders.
Cedarburg, WI
Established in 1843, this Lutheran cemetery holds some of Cedarburg's earliest settlers, many of them German immigrants who founded the mill town along Cedar Creek in the antebellum decades. The ground marks the first generation of pioneers who cleared farms and built the congregations that anchored frontier Wisconsin life.
Fort Worth, TX
Fort Worth Methodism began in 1853 with a circuit-riding preacher on horseback carrying the gospel to homes across Tarrant County. As membership swelled, the congregation built and outgrew a succession of churches, and on the very day of the 1929 stock-market crash it broke ground on a soaring Gothic Revival edifice inspired by Notre-Dame in Paris. Members literally locked the old doors and walked together to the new sanctuary in 1930, where a long tradition of homeless outreach and broadcast ministry later took root.
Madisonville, TX
This congregation traces its roots to 1842, when circuit-riding preacher Henderson Palmer served the area before Madison County even organized. Ministers from surrounding Methodist districts tended the flock until it became a separate charge in 1856. Members built a one-room church in 1892, replaced it with a larger structure in 1904, and raised the present sanctuary in 1951, adopting the name First United Methodist Church in 1968.
Chandler, TX
This congregation traces its roots to the 1870s, when Methodists gathered at Stillwater along the Upper Athens–Tyler stagecoach road and A. H. Chandler donated land for a church. Chartered through the efforts of local families, it gained its first appointed pastor in 1889 and moved through a succession of buildings as it grew. The Colonial-style church standing today was built in 1953 and later renamed First United Methodist Church of Chandler.
Tom Bean, TX
This Methodist congregation grew out of open-air brush arbor meetings at a rural campground in the mid-1880s, then followed its people into the new railroad town of Tom Bean. Fire, a tornado, and shared quarters with the Presbyterians all shaped its story, and a later sanctuary even preserved the heritage of a chapel from the nearby Perrin Air Force Base. It is a congregation whose home moved and rebuilt again and again as the community around it changed.
Kaufman, TX
Organized in 1845 as a Methodist Episcopal congregation in the town then called Kingsborough—soon renamed Kaufman—this church took root just as Texas joined the Union. From a first building in 1857 to a white-frame steepled sanctuary in 1876 and a substantial brick church in 1909, its successive buildings chart the growth of a North Texas county seat. Each stage was led by a named circuit-era pastor.
San Marcos, TX
Hays County's first church was organized on August 5, 1847, when circuit rider A. B. F. Kerr gathered nine charter members in the home of John D. Pitts. By 1849 the growing congregation met in a log house that served at once as church, courthouse, and school, braving wild animals and the dangers of the frontier to worship. A first building rose on this site in 1855, and the present Gothic Revival sanctuary was completed in 1893.
Alvord, TX
Organized in 1884 as the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, this Alvord congregation raised its first building that March under Rev. F.W. Morton and hung a 600-pound bell cast by the historic C.S. Bell Company of Ohio. A women's society formed in 1890 and remains active, while an 1884 Sunday school, a 1922 consolidation with the Foster church, and mid-century additions carried the congregation forward. The 1961 sanctuary even reused wood from the original 1884 building.
Mont Belvieu, TX
After Amos and Ann Barber settled here in 1849, the area became known as Barbers Hill, and early preaching took place in their home before Captain Robert S. Dingham began a Sunday School. In 1877 the congregation organized as Barbers Chapel, a Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and the Barbers gave four acres for a church and school. A cemetery opened when a family needed a burial site during construction, and the sanctuary grew through additions in 1932, 1945, and 1957.
Albany, TX
Organized in 1873 at the ranch home of J. C. Lynch, this is the oldest congregation in the Northwest Texas Conference and the first church of any denomination in Shackelford County. Circuit-riding preacher Levi Collins came from Weatherford to gather the frontier Methodists. Over the decades the congregation weathered an 1888 tornado and rebuilt repeatedly, culminating in its present sanctuary.
Anson, TX
This West Texas congregation was gathered in 1882 by a Methodist circuit rider, one of the saddle-worn preachers who carried the faith across the frontier. In 1908 a local builder raised the Romanesque Revival sanctuary that still anchors the town, its bell tower later trimmed down against the prairie winds. For more than a century the church has grown right alongside Anson itself.
Austin, TX
In 1840, only a year after Austin was laid out as capital of the young Republic of Texas, a Methodist circuit rider named John Haynie gathered fourteen members into a fellowship that first worshiped in temporary quarters — including the Republic's own Capitol building. The congregation built a wooden church on Congress Avenue in 1847, later a brick edifice at Brazos and 10th, and finally the Neo-Classical structure on the present property purchased in 1921. In 1853 doctors meeting in its original building organized the Texas Medical Association.
Bartlett, TX
Founded as the Indian Creek Church sometime between 1870 and 1875, this Methodist congregation moved into Bartlett about 1885 and worshipped in a store, schoolhouse, and borrowed Baptist church before building its own homes. The present sanctuary, begun in 1896 and enlarged in 1912, was dedicated in 1921 after a gift from Mrs. S. T. Morrison retired its debt; the dedication was led by former pastor H. A. Boaz, later a bishop and president of Southern Methodist University. Membership grew from thirteen to a peak of 310 in the late 1950s.
Beaumont, TX
Methodism reached Beaumont in 1839 with missionary Samuel A. Williams, followed by circuit riders who worked the bayou country's "Alligator Circuit," preaching in brush arbors, homes, and a frame schoolhouse. Lay preacher John Fletcher Pipkin held the community together through the lean years, performing marriages and funerals for all faiths between the circuit riders' rare visits. After an 1865 hurricane and hard Reconstruction times, Methodists and Baptists pooled resources in 1877 before the congregation raised a succession of ever-grander churches.
Belton, TX
Founded in 1850, the same year Bell County was created, this Methodist congregation began on a frontier circuit before settling into a home of its own. By the 1880s the flock had outgrown its first building, and in 1884–86 members raised this larger Gothic-detailed sanctuary from locally made brick set on a native stone foundation. The original steeple came down in a 1925 remodeling.
Bishop, TX
Methodists in the newly platted South Texas town of Bishop gathered in the town hall in November 1911 to organize a church, with a visiting pastor from nearby Calallen presiding over a small band of charter members. Town founder F. Z. Bishop offered lots to every denomination, but the Methodists traded theirs for ground nearer the business district and broke ground in 1912, clearing their debt within nine years despite drought and hurricane. A larger sanctuary seating more than 400 followed in the 1950s as the congregation grew past 500 members.
Bridgeport, TX
When the Rock Island rail line reached the Bridgeport area in 1893, a Methodist congregation organized the very same year, first gathering under brush arbors and in the Masonic Lodge before circuit rider Ben W. Bounds preached its first sermon that June. A donation of land soon gave the church a home on "Methodist Hill," a building later lost to fire and rebuilt. As Bridgeport shifted from coal-mining town to ranch-and-dairy trade center and finally lake resort, the congregation stayed woven into community life.
Caldwell, TX
Organized in 1840, this Methodist congregation is among the oldest in Texas, once counted as one of twelve appointments on the Nashville Circuit during the days of the Republic. In 1841 the Republic granted the church a wooded grove as a building site, and after Caldwell became its own circuit in 1852 the first sanctuary rose in 1854. By 1890 the growing congregation had built anew and hosted the Texas Methodist Conference; the present building was raised in 1927 on that historic 1841 ground.
Cameron, TX
This congregation grew out of the first wave of Methodist missionary work in Texas, tracing its roots to an 1841 camp meeting in Milam County—just four years after the earliest Methodist preachers reached the young republic. For decades a circuit rider served Cameron until the church earned a full-time pastor in 1885, raising a succession of buildings that culminated in the sanctuary first used in 1923.
Carthage, TX
In 1855, as East Texas was filling with settlers, a handful of Methodists in the young town of Carthage began meeting in the local Masonic Hall. They bought this property in 1859 and raised a frame church whose completion was interrupted by the Civil War, sharing the building for a time with local Baptists. Over the following century the congregation rebuilt in frame and then brick, and in 1959 it was established enough to help found a daughter church.
Cedar Hill, TX
Organized in 1854, this Cedar Hill congregation lost its first church to a tornado just two years later, then worshiped in a frame building before raising the present structure in 1900. With its off-center entry tower and Gothic detailing, the church is a fine example of the country houses of worship that once dotted the Texas countryside. The bell installed in 1900 still calls the faithful to services.
Clarendon, TX
Methodist minister Lewis H. Carhart founded Clarendon in 1878 as a sober religious and educational colony on the Panhandle plains—cowboys mockingly dubbed the saloonless town "Saint's Roost." When the railroad arrived in 1887 the town moved to its present site, where circuit riders and then the Rev. Isaac L. Mills organized the Methodist Episcopal Church, South in 1888. As Clarendon College drew new members, the congregation built its large Classical Revival sanctuary in 1910.
Columbus, TX
One of the earliest Protestant congregations in Texas, this Methodist church traces its roots to Stephen F. Austin's original colony and built its first sanctuary near the Colorado River in 1848 on a lot sold for a single dollar. It moved and rebuilt as Columbus grew, raising a new church south of the railroad in 1873 and its present site's building in 1897. Its long list of early trustees reads like a roster of the town's founding families.
Comanche, TX
This Methodist congregation grew out of the frontier settlement of Cora, the first seat of Comanche County, where it was organized in 1858 and then followed the government to the new town of Comanche a year later. In the rough-hewn early days it drew colorful circuit-riding pastors, none more so than the Rev. Hugh M. Childress, the gun-toting "Bear Hunter Preacher." As membership grew, the church built new facilities in 1879 and absorbed smaller country congregations from White Point, Indian Creek, and Proctor.
Dallas, TX
Methodism reached Dallas as early as 1846, when circuit riders stopped at the small village, and the first organized group met in 1850 without a building of their own. The Civil War swallowed their building funds, but members persevered to dedicate the Lamar Street Methodist Church in 1868; after fire and mergers, the congregation borrowed space at Temple Emanuel before completing new homes in 1889 and 1926. Renamed across denominational changes, it became First United Methodist Church in 1968 and helped seed Methodist churches across North Texas.
De Kalb, TX
Methodism reached this corner of northeast Texas with circuit rider William Stevenson, who preached along the Red River in 1815 even though Protestant worship was still illegal in Spanish Texas. A mission began in DeKalb in 1836, the year the town was founded, when the area was still reckoned part of Miller County, Arkansas. The first church was a humble log building that doubled as a schoolhouse, and the congregation followed the town's growth — moving with the arrival of the Texas & Pacific Railroad and again in 1913.
Del Rio, TX
Six settlers organized a Methodist congregation in the border town of Del Rio in 1882, meeting first in members' homes before building a frame chapel on the edge of town. The church grew with the city—swelling as soldiers trained at nearby Camp Michie during World War I and again with the opening of Laughlin Air Force Base—and today carries on missions at home and abroad.
Dickinson, TX
Methodists began meeting in Dickinson-area homes in 1876, and by 1885 they had built a frame structure that served as both church and school. The great Galveston storm of 1900 swept away their building, and the congregation rebuilt in 1901 using salvaged materials. Over the decades it was renamed to honor benefactors—Howell Memorial in 1944—before becoming First United Methodist Church of Dickinson in the sanctuary begun in 1975.
Elkhart, TX
Methodism reached this part of Anderson County in 1840, when settlers gathered to worship in one another's homes, and in 1878 a formal mission took shape under a circuit-riding minister who tended eight congregations at once. From a white frame sanctuary with a high steeple raised in the 1890s, the church added a Sunday school, a youth ministry, and a women's missionary society, rebuilding and expanding across the decades to a new sanctuary consecrated in 1974. Its long life traces the settlement and maturing of Elkhart itself.
Euless, TX
In the late 1860s, Methodist families from Tennessee settled this corner of Tarrant County and began meeting for worship, sharing a Grange hall with neighbors of other faiths. As pioneer Elisha Adam Euless gave his name to the growing community, the congregation built its first sanctuary and welcomed circuit-riding preachers who covered a wide rural territory. The church grew alongside the town, and when Fort Worth and Dallas sprawl reached Euless in the mid-twentieth century, both congregation and community expanded together.
Evant, TX
Organized in the mid-1870s in the Langford's Cove community, later renamed Evant, this Methodist congregation began with just seven charter members and, when its founding pastor returned to Mississippi, kept the faith alive through prayer meetings, brush-arbor gatherings, and camp meetings. New families arriving from as far as Rhode Island and Wales swelled its ranks, and the congregation shared a building with other denominations until it built its own in 1905. It reached its peak of 201 members in 1963 and continues today.
Falfurrias, TX
The Rev. C. W. Perkins organized this Methodist congregation in 1904 with just seven charter members, worshipping first in the railroad depot and the 1905 frame schoolhouse shared by every denomination. In 1906 the Methodists built their own church on land donated by town founder Edward C. Lasater. Battered by hurricanes in 1916 and 1919 and remodeled in 1935, the frame building gave way to the present church in 1950.
Ferris, TX
The Houston & Texas Central Railway laid out Ferris in 1874, and that same year circuit-riding ministers John S. Davis and George W. Owens began gathering Methodists in the new rail town. The railroad donated lots in 1885 for a first church, and as Ferris grew into a cotton-ginning town of shops, depot, and schools, the congregation moved through successive conferences and buildings, sharing space with Presbyterians in the 1920s. A modern sanctuary followed in 1964.
Florence, TX
In the 1850s Florence was a cluster of log cabins with a shared stone building that served as church and meeting house on the Texas frontier. Circuit-riding Methodist ministers, serving several communities at once, brought regular preaching, and Rev. John Carpenter became the congregation's first appointed pastor in 1858. The church grew across the decades through mission societies, youth groups, and successive new buildings.
Gainesville, TX
Formed in 1852, this North Texas congregation first shared a meeting place with other denominations and the Masonic Lodge before raising a frame church in 1878 on land donated by James M. Lindsay. The present red-brick, Gothic Revival sanctuary, built by contractor John Garrett, was begun in 1892 and dedicated in 1893, and is notable for its Art Nouveau stained glass. An education building was added in 1965.
Giddings, TX
Founded in 1871 with twenty-four charter members, this was the first congregation organized in Giddings — predating even the platting of the town in 1872 — under its first pastor, the Rev. William C. Lewis. The members raised their first church building in 1879, and the congregation grew from a stop on a preaching circuit into a full station charge by 1938. The present sanctuary dates to 1957.
Happy, TX
A Methodist fellowship took shape in Happy in 1905 out of meetings held in settlers' homes, first worshipping in a schoolhouse and then a small frame church shared with Baptists, Christians, and Presbyterians. When the town relocated to the new Santa Fe rail line, the congregation literally hauled its church building by wagon to the fresh townsite in 1909. A circuit rider reorganized the little flock, which weathered a fire, remodels, and a new 1930s sanctuary to keep serving the Panhandle community.
Hebbronville, TX
The First United Methodist Church of Hebbronville was organized in December 1912 at Mrs. Ralph McCampbell's ranch, in the heart of South Texas cattle country. For fifteen years its members worshiped alongside the local Baptists in a schoolhouse, until the Edds family donated land for a shared church, completed in 1927. For a century it has served as a beacon for this ranching community.
Hempstead, TX
Methodism took hold in Hempstead around 1857, just after the town was platted, and an 1859 revival swelled the young congregation enough to acquire a building for worship. Formally deeded to the Methodist Episcopal Church South in 1883, the congregation raised a succession of sanctuaries and served as one of the town's central gathering places. Through mergers and renamings it became today's First United Methodist Church of Hempstead.
Hewitt, TX
Methodist settlers around Hewitt first worshiped at Stanford Chapel, organized about 1875, and shared a union Sunday school with local Baptists before the Northwest Texas Conference formed a Hewitt circuit in 1900. The Hewitt Methodist Church took shape that year, absorbing members of Stanford Chapel when it disbanded in 1912 and even moving its tabernacle into town for summer revivals. The congregation became a full station in 1953 and marked its centennial in 2000.
Huntsville, TX
Methodism reached Huntsville in the 1840s through circuit-riding preachers before the young Texas Methodist Conference assigned a resident pastor in 1842. The congregation worshiped without a permanent building for years, finally raising its first sanctuary in the 1850s and rebuilding repeatedly as the town grew and fire twice took the structure. Each rebuilding — culminating in the 1913 church — traces the deepening roots of an East Texas town settled in the Republic era.
Junction, TX
Early Junction worshippers gathered under brush arbors, and by the 1870s an active Methodist Society hosted circuit-riding preachers like the famously combative 'Fighting Parson' Andrew Jackson Potter. Organized as a mission church in 1881, the congregation built a sanctuary and parsonage in 1889 and, in 1930, a Spanish mission-style church — its building committee including future Texas governor Coke R. Stevenson, who had grown up in the congregation.
Katy, TX
In the last years of the nineteenth century, settlers on the Texas coastal prairie west of Houston gathered across denominational lines—Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, Quakers, and Disciples of Christ—for a Union Sunday School in a neighbor's parlor. Around 1900 the Methodists organized their own fellowship, and in 1904 they raised the first church building in the young town of Katy. Successive sanctuaries built in 1938 and 1961 traced the congregation's growth alongside the community it anchored.
Kingsville, TX
Kingsville's first Methodist service was held on March 4, 1904, when a visiting Corpus Christi pastor preached to thirty-one worshippers seated under mesquite trees in the brand-new railroad town on the King Ranch. The congregation moved from storefronts and a borrowed Presbyterian church into its own building by 1909, and grew through a succession of sanctuaries to the one completed in 1951. Its decades of missionary and community work helped anchor the young South Texas town.
Lancaster, TX
Organized on May 25, 1868, by the Rev. Andrew Davis, this is among the oldest churches in North Texas, its early members worshiping in the Masonic Hall until a building rose in 1874. That first sanctuary reflected Victorian custom with separate entrances and seating for men and women. A larger church followed in 1911, and the present sanctuary, built in 1957, stands on the site of the original.
Leonard, TX
As the young town of Leonard grew after its 1880 founding, its Methodist congregation—organized just three years later—built this brick sanctuary in 1906. Its Gothic Revival detailing reflected the aspirations of a settled prairie community, and the building was dedicated free of debt in 1909 with a bishop preaching the sermon.
Lovelady, TX
Organized in 1872, the very year the town of Lovelady was founded, this church grew from a Sunday School begun by Mrs. J.R.B. Barbee and was chartered by the circuit rider William Bonner. For years the Methodists worshiped in the 1872 Presbyterian sanctuary they acquired in 1892, before building a new facility here in 1910.
Marlin, TX
Methodism reached this stretch of the Brazos before Falls County or the town of Marlin even existed, carried by circuit-riding preachers beginning with the Rev. John W. DeVilbiss in 1842. A full-time pastor arrived in 1874, and by 1910 the congregation had raised a brick sanctuary of local Brazos River red clay, its windows imported from Italy. The church became a hub of mission work—one member, Maggie Rogers, served as a missionary in China for nearly four decades.
McKinney, TX
This McKinney congregation began humbly in 1851 as a mission of the Dallas Circuit, meeting in the county courthouse, a Masonic hall, or a shared union building before it built a home of its own in 1876. Becoming an independent station in 1879, it completed the ornate sanctuary that still stands in 1901, only to lose its original steeple to high winds in 1954. It remains the city's last elaborate turn-of-the-century church building.
Midlothian, TX
Methodist worship reached this stretch of Ellis County in the late 1840s, when settlers met in homes and were served by circuit-riding preachers who rode out from Waxahachie. Congregations gathered in pioneer schoolhouses and in early settlements like Hawkins and Lebanon before the flock consolidated in the growing railroad town of Midlothian in 1883. A permanent sanctuary rose in 1902, replaced by a new house of worship in 1966, and many members still descend from those first pioneer families.
Morgan, TX
Organized in 1889, the Morgan Methodist congregation first borrowed the local Baptist church before launching plans at an 1891 revival to build its own sanctuary. The one-room structure grew room by room over the years and blends Carpenter Gothic form with Greek Revival touches, lancet windows, and a belfry added in 1901–02. It was named a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1983.
Mount Vernon, TX
This Methodist congregation organized in 1855 with thirteen charter members, first meeting in Joe Wylie Parchman's home south of town, then in a Masonic hall, before buying this site and building a meetinghouse in 1875. Successively larger buildings followed—a frame church in 1896–97, the present edifice in 1930, and an education building in 1953. Over its long life the church has sent at least four of its own men into the ministry.
Nacogdoches, TX
Once the Republic of Texas guaranteed religious freedom, the missionary Littleton Fowler preached in Nacogdoches in October 1837 and soon gathered an eighteen-member "Methodist Society" — the first Protestant congregation organized in the town after Texas independence. Led by a succession of pastors, the Methodists became the town's most active Protestants by 1850 and built their first church in 1860. Later buildings burned and were rebuilt, and the congregation helped found a college bible chair and a sister church before completing its present home in 1969.