Archer City Methodist Church

The town the circuit riders served grew slowly at first. Archer City had about 150 people in 1884, when county business was its main trade and cotton its chief shipment, though no railroad had come. By 1890 it had about 250 residents, a weekly newspaper, daily mail and a daily stage to Wichita Falls. In 1892 the post office, called Archer, took the town's name. An ornate stone courthouse, a brickyard and a hotel followed, and by 1900 the town had a bank and three livestock dealers, with cotton still its staple trade.

What the plaque says

This congregation began as a mission in 1880, the same year Archer City was organized. The earliest pastors, including the Rev. D. D. Duncan and the Rev. I. N. Crutchfield, were circuit riders who also served neighboring counties. Members of Archer City Methodist Church constructed their first sanctuary in 1889 and built new facilities in later years as they grew in numbers. The church became a full-time, self-supporting member of the North Texas Conference in 1912. Throughout its history the congregation has provided significant service to the community. (1985)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Royal Theater — steps away
  Archer City's movie house, burned in 1965, given a false front for The Last Picture Show and brought back by the town in the 1990s as a working stage on Main Street.
• Lake Arrowhead State Park — 18 mi
  A prairie park on the north shore of the Wichita Falls water-supply lake, which drowned the town of Halsell in 1965-66, with mesquite campsites, a lighted pier and more than 200 bird species.
• Kell House Museum — 23 mi
  The 1909 Classic Revival house of Frank Kell, the miller and railroad builder who helped make Wichita Falls a city, shown by guided tour with its family furniture still in place.
• World's Littlest Skyscraper — 23 mi
  A four-story brick tower in downtown Wichita Falls, 40 feet tall and 10 feet wide, the leftover of a 1919 oil-boom office deal in which, the story goes, investors misread inches as feet.

More markers nearby

• First Baptist Church of Archer City — steps away
• Archer County Discovery Well — steps away
• Camp Cureton, C.S.A. — steps away
• A Jesse James Hideout — steps away