Historical Marker
Acton Methodist Church
Acton, Hood County · Texas
Erected 1993
Acton's size is a fair measure of what was built nearby. The Handbook of Texas estimates 200 residents in 1887, then a slide to 75 from 1949 through the early 1960s. Work on De Cordova Bend Dam, from the mid-1960s to 1970, pushed the count to 210, and it settled near 130 once Lake Granbury filled. Another surge came as workers for the Comanche Peak plant arrived, reaching 450 by 1988. The 2000 count was 1,129, and the Handbook reports the same figure into the 2020s.
What the plaque says
Acton Methodist Church Settlement of Acton, originally known as Comanche Peak Post Office, began in the early 1850's. By 1855 several local churches, including the Methodist congregation which gave rise to this church, formed a union church and shared a sanctuary on nearby Walnut Creek. Beginning in 1868 union church services were held in the Masonic Lodge Hall. Acton Methodist was well established by 1873, the year it hosted the Methodist Church district conference. In 1874 church trustees purchased 4.4 acres here from V.S. Anglin and G.W. Patton for church, school, and burial purposes. The congregation built its first sanctuary in 1899 and a tabernacle in 1908. Other facilities, built over the years, supported a growing congregation and housed fellowship and sunday school programs. The name of the congregation was changed to the Methodist Church in 1939 and to Acton United Methodist Church in 1968. Construction of the nearby de Cordova Bend Reservoir in 1966 restored prosperity to this area and resulted in a steady expansion of the Acton Methodist congregation; membership in the church grew from 106 in 1973 to 1196 in 1993. The church continues to serve the community with a variety of worship, educational, and outreach programs and activities. (1994)
Where it stands
32.44357, -97.68669 · Directions
Worth the stop nearby
- Acton State Historic Site — 0.3 miThe smallest state historic site in Texas, a grave plot holding Elizabeth Crockett, widow of David Crockett, under a 1913 statue of a pioneer woman shading her eyes toward the west.
- Granbury Courthouse Square — 5.9 miA National Register square of limestone storefronts around W. C. Dodson's Second Empire courthouse, whose clock tower citizens saved after a 1968 tornado.
- Cleburne State Park — 15 miA 1930s Civilian Conservation Corps park on the old Chisholm Trail crossing country, with a spring-fed lake, a hand-carved three-tiered spillway and a CCC bridge in Johnson County.
- Dinosaur Valley State Park — 16 miTheropod and sauropod trackways of about 113 million years ago in the bed of the Paluxy River, a National Natural Landmark where R. T. Bird found the first distinct sauropod tracks in 1937.