First Baptist Church of Archer City

A post office opened in 1878, and about 1879 C. B. Hutto settled nearby and platted the town. He donated land for a square, a lot for the jail and lots for Protestant churches, and gave a frameless wooden building for use as a courthouse. Soon after the Baptists organized, the town voted to ban the sale of liquor. The Handbook of Texas counts this congregation as the county's first church. By 1914 Archer City had two railroads and about 825 people, and it incorporated in 1925 as oil wells opened nearby.

What the plaque says

Soon after Archer City was laid out in 1879, a building intended for a saloon was bought by residents for use as a schoolhouse. In February 1880, eight members organized First Baptist Church in the school building and worshiped there until a meetinghouse was erected in 1890. The structure was destroyed in a storm and rebuilt. The Rev. Joe B. (Uncle Joe) Benson, the first pastor, also preached in nearby communities. The Sunday School began in 1899. Westfork, Baxter, and New Bethel Community Baptist Churches joined this fellowship. Sanctuaries were erected in 1929 and in 1972. (1980)

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

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