First Baptist Church of McGregor

In February 1942 the Army acquired 18,000 acres southwest of McGregor for the Bluebonnet Ordnance Plant, according to the Handbook of Texas. Bombs came off the first line that October, and the plant eventually turned out more than four million. Women worked the heavy machinery, while Black workers were required to use segregated facilities. The payroll reached about 5,000, and McGregor's population tripled. After the war much land went to Texas A&M, the Air Force brought rocket fuel work in 1952, and SpaceX leased part of the site in 2003 for engine testing.

What the plaque says

First Baptist Church of McGregor This congregation traces its origin to the establishment in 1858 of the Onion Creek Baptist Church (10 miles SW at present-day Eagle Springs, Coryell County). Members of the Onion Creek congregation later organized the Comanche Springs Baptist Church. The Rev. John McClain and the Rev. Martin Isbill and about 30 members of Comanche Springs Baptist Church established the First Baptist Church of McGregor in1884. The congregation erected its first church building at this site in 1886. In 1890 they joined the Waco Baptist Association which met in McGregor in 1895 and 1907. By 1911 Sunday school enrollment had grown to 280 pupils. Successful fund-raising activities begun by The Ladies Aid Society in 1908 resulted in the building of a new sancturary in 1914. In 1923 the church called its first full-time pastor and in the early 1940s a parsonage was constructed. The church grew steadily and by 1960 membership in the congregation reached 642. A new brick parsonage was built in 1961 and in 1969 a new sancturary was completed. First Baptist Church of McGregor has historically supported numerous local, state, national, and international missionary activities and a number of community outreach programs and activites. (1994)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Mother Neff State Park — 7.8 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.
• Waco Mammoth National Monument — 18 mi
  A bone bed on the Bosque River where a nursery herd of at least 19 Columbian mammoths was trapped and drowned by floodwater 65,000 to 72,000 years ago, left in place under a dig shelter.
• Dr Pepper Museum — 18 mi
  The 1906 bottling plant of the Artesian Manufacturing and Bottling Company, built where Dr Pepper outgrew a Waco drugstore soda fountain, now the Dr Pepper Museum.
• Armstrong Browning Library — 19 mi
  A three-story Italian Renaissance library on the Baylor campus built to hold A. J. Armstrong's Browning collection, dedicated in December 1951 and now, by its own account, the world's largest of Browning material.

More markers nearby

• First Christian Church of McGregor (Disciples of Christ) — 0.2 mi
• McGregor — 0.3 mi
• McGregor Mirror — 0.3 mi
• The Grange in Texas — 2.2 mi