First Baptist Church of Cisco

Cisco was named for John A. Cisco, the New York financier largely responsible for building the Houston and Texas Central. After the town moved to the rail crossing, the Texas and Pacific acquired lots there and sold them to immigrants, using brochures that called Cisco the Gate City of the West and promised settlers half fares and generous baggage service. Once newcomers arrived, railroad agricultural agents told them what to plant and when, and sometimes supplied the seed. The Handbook of Texas notes that the town's religious groups met together in the schoolhouse until each could build a church.

What the plaque says

The Rev. C.G. Stephens, founder of Red Gap Community (1 mi. W), joined the Rev. W.B. Cobb in 1878 to organize the Red Gap Baptist Church. Forerunner of the First Baptist Church of Cisco, The Red Gap congregation had 13 charter members who met in a one-room log schoolhouse. This small membership organized seven churches into the Red Gap Baptist Association. The junction of the Texas & Pacific Railroad and the Houston & Texas Central Railroad established Cisco and began the demise of Red Gap. The congregation moved to Cisco in 1881 and built a church house at 10th and Avenue E. The next year they constructed a 36' x 50' building at this site. A deadly tornado in 1893 totally destroyed the building. A new structure, completed the following year, burned in 1924. The collapse of an earlier oil boom, which had brought rapid growth to Cisco and the church, caused financial losses. The congregation met in Cisco City Hall and schoolhouses until a new structure could be completed. This fellowship started a mission at Liberty Hill (4 mi. NW) and a Spanish language mission in northeast Cisco. Former pastors of this church have become presidents of Baptist colleges, missionaries, evangelists and special service ministers. (1978)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Conrad Hilton Center and Mobley Hotel — 0.3 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.
• Old Rip at the Eastland County Courthouse — 9.5 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.
• Old Jail Art Center — 30 mi
  An art museum in Albany's 1878 stone jail, where the masons carved their initials to be sure of pay, now holding Chinese tomb figures and works by Picasso and Klee.

More markers nearby

• First United Methodist Church of Cisco — steps away
• First Presbyterian Church of Cisco — 0.3 mi
• Cisco College — 1.0 mi
• Mangum Baptist Church — 8.5 mi