Empire Masonic Lodge

The lodge's minutes show how a building's ordinary life reached Nevada. After the 1888 move, the Masons bought lots 1 and 2 of Block 2 for $82. The county history site, working from those minutes, notes a November 1899 entry calling for the belfry to be boarded up to keep the birds out. In 1902 the lodge gave up its claim to the old Empire schoolhouse, passing it to the Bear Creek School. A list of its worshipful masters runs from M. W. McBride in 1884 through 1998.

What the plaque says

Empire Masonic Lodge In the mid- to late 1800s, settlers established the Empire community, which at one time had a school, post office, churches, stores and a cotton gin. On December 14, 1884, 25 master masons petitioned the Grand Lodge of Texas to form a masonic lodge in Empire. The first officers for Empire Lodge no. 586 were M.W. Mcbride, worshipful master; E.B. Simmons, senior warden; W.M. Blakeman, junior warden; J.E. Jones, secretary; and J.L. Stallings, treasurer. Meetings were held at Empire College on the Saturdays before full moons. In 1888, as Empire began to decline, the masonic lodge moved to Nevada. Members built a two-story wooden building facing west on Warren Street. In 1904, Empire Lodge bought the J.E. Davis building on the northwest corner of the Nevada square and sold the former building. The Davis building was destroyed by the deadly 1927 tornado which led to Nevada's decline. The lodge endured, and construction began on a new building using funds donated by fellow lodges, the Grand Lodge and a loan; members met in the odd fellows hall until the new structure was completed. In 1972, the lodge moved from that building into a new structure. Masonic Lodge no. 586 has reached out to its surrounding communities since its inception. It adopted Bear Creek Cemetery, the last remaining vestige of the old empire settlement. Over the years, the lodge has also aided children of deceased members in getting into the masonic orphanage, has recommended area children with disabilities for the scottish rite hospital, and has participated in other community, school and social events. Today, it remains historically intertwined with Empire, while functioning as the oldest institution in Nevada. (2009)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Rockwall County Historical Foundation & Museum — 8.9 mi
  A small museum in Harry Myers Park that keeps the evidence on Rockwall's rock wall, sandstone dikes that geologists call natural and folk tales call built.
• Heard Natural Science Museum & Wildlife Sanctuary — 16 mi
  A 289-acre sanctuary in McKinney that Bessie Heard founded at the age of 80, with five habitats, a 50-acre wetland and 6.5 miles of trails.
• Audie Murphy / American Cotton Museum — 17 mi
  A Greenville museum of Hunt County's military heroes, including Audie Murphy, and of cotton, which keeps the engine of what it says was the world's largest inland cotton compress.
• No. 1 British Flying Training School Museum — 23 mi
  A free museum at Terrell's airport where about 2,200 RAF cadets learned to fly between 1941 and 1945, with logbooks, uniforms, letters and original training aircraft.

More markers nearby

• Nevada Baptist Church — steps away
• Nevada — 0.3 mi
• Community Independent School District — 1.6 mi
• Central National Road of the Republic of Texas — 2.2 mi