First Baptist Church of Killeen

The church's own account tells of a shaky start: nine charter members at Palo Alto in 1873, a pause in 1879, a restart in 1881 and a temporary home in Killeen's public school. The congregation then built a frame church and tabernacle at Fourth and Green, and a red brick sanctuary went up there in 1917. Its last Sunday as the sanctuary was November 5, 1955. When the building was razed, a mason offered the bricks to a couple, who stacked them for years and then built a house.

What the plaque says

First Baptist Church of Killeen This fellowship was established in 1873 as the Baptist Church of Christ at Palo Alto. In 1883, one year after Killeen was founded on the rail line, the congregation moved three miles southwest to the new town. The Rev. Thomas H. Bacon served as first pastor of the Missionary Baptist Church of Killeen, as it was renamed. The large influx of people who came to the area during the building of Ft. Hood in 1942 resulted in a great increase in membership. Through its active mission work, First Baptist Church of Killeen has led in the formation of several area congregations. (1983)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Temple Railroad and Heritage Museum — 22 mi
  The Santa Fe depot of 1911 in a railroad town that began in 1880 as a construction camp, now a museum with locomotives and cars parked beside the active rail yard.
• Mother Neff State Park — 23 mi
  A Leon River park that grew from six acres Isabella Neff left the state in her 1921 will, where Civilian Conservation Corps Company 817 built a stone tower, a pavilion and roads in the 1930s.

More markers nearby

• Killeen Herald — 1.8 mi
• John Blackburn Log House — 2.0 mi
• City of Killeen — 2.0 mi
• Immanuel Lutheran Church Cemetery — 2.3 mi