Center Point United Methodist Church

The Methodists here were part of a larger Kerr County habit of worship out of doors. Religious groups found the climate and Hill Country landscape congenial for camp meetings. The Westminster Encampment for Presbyterians, the first church-run camp, opened in 1906, and the Methodist Kerrville Assembly Grounds followed in 1924. The Country Cowboy Camp Meeting began in 1940 and still met every year in the 1990s. Summer camps and dude ranches grew up alongside them: twelve camps by 1950, and by 1989 more than thirty, serving over 23,000 children.

What the plaque says

Center Point United Methodist Church In 1852, before there was a town here, Mrs. Henrietta Rees and her children came from Tennessee. Soon, she arranged for Methodist circuit riders to come to this area. One acre was bought for a church in 1872 from W. G. ("Gabe") Cocke and his wife Vanilla. About 1876 the Rev. W. E. Pafford and Turley Cocke built a church house. This site was purchased in 1883 from James Sellers. After a storm destroyed the first building under construction, a second was erected. This third structure was completed in 1911 by the men of the congregation. (1979)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Treue der Union Monument — 7.5 mi
  An 1866 German-language monument in Comfort over the graves of Hill Country Unionists killed at the Nueces in 1862, its flag of thirty-six stars kept at half-staff.
• Schreiner Mansion — 9.5 mi
  The 1879 downtown home of Charles Schreiner, the Alsatian-born merchant, banker and rancher whose store and mohair trade built Kerrville.
• Frontier Times Museum — 15 mi
  A museum built of fossils, petrified wood and cave formations in Bandera, holding a printer-historian's collection of frontier relics and oddities.
• Old Tunnel State Park — 17 mi
  A railroad tunnel abandoned in 1942 that now shelters up to three million Mexican free-tailed bats, who fly out each evening from May through October.

More markers nearby

• Center Point Christian Church — steps away
• Center Point School — steps away
• Rising Star Lodge No. 429, A.F. & A.M. — steps away
• Mosty Brothers Nursery — 0.4 mi