Desdemona First Baptist Church

The boom that crowded this congregation out of town ended quickly. Desdemona's oil production fell from 7,375,825 barrels in 1919 to 2,488,755 in 1921, chiefly, the Handbook of Texas says, because of overdrilling, and the bust hit Desdemona harder than the county's other boomtowns. In 1936 the city government dissolved itself, and the twelve-grade school closed in 1969. Still, ninety wells in the field were producing oil or gas in 1976, and a Mobil plant was distilling butane. The town counted about 180 people in 1980 and again in 2000.

What the plaque says

This church was organized by nine charter members in 1872. Religious observances began with brush arbor meetings organized in the summer of 1872 by The Rev. Johnnie Northcutt. Early settlers traveled by wagon, horseback, buggy, and on foot to meet under the canopy of Spanish oaks along the banks of nearby Hog Creek (about 1 mile south) to hear Northcutt's Baptist sermons. Beginning in the fall of 1872 monthly services were held in a schoolhouse built near the Hog Creek site by Johnny Carruth and Charlie Mitchell. The congregation, originally called Rockdale Baptist Church, built their first sanctuary in the village of Desdemona shortly after the establishment of the community's first post office in 1877. About that time the church was renamed Desdemona First Baptist Church. Box suppers, baptisms, picnic services at area lakes and water tanks, and lengthy revivals soon became routine activities for the congregation. The discovery of oil here transformed Desdemona from a small village to a booming oil town by 1919. To escape the crowded conditions of Desdemona the congregation built a new sanctuary at this site in 1921-22 on land donated by C.H. and Fannie Genoway. The congregation, active in various missionary efforts, continues to serve the local community. (1993)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Old Rip at the Eastland County Courthouse — 18 mi
  A horned lizard in a glass-topped casket in the 1928 Eastland courthouse, the creature said to have come out alive from the old building's cornerstone after thirty-one years.
• Conrad Hilton Center and Mobley Hotel — 27 mi
  The 40-room oil-boom hotel in Cisco that Conrad Hilton bought in 1919 when a bank deal fell through, now a museum of the Hilton start and of Cisco's 1927 Santa Claus bank robbery.

More markers nearby

• Fort Blair, C.S.A. — 0.3 mi
• Desdemona Cemetery — 0.8 mi
• Site of Blackwell Hospital — 8.5 mi
• Old Shinoak Springs — 9.7 mi