First Baptist Church of Rockport

The plaque gives the 1919 hurricane one clause, but it defined this coast for a generation. Warning flags at Corpus Christi came down at sundown on September 13, when forecasters expected the storm to turn toward Louisiana. The next day it came ashore between Baffin Bay and Corpus Christi with sustained winds near 115 mph and a surge of 16 feet. The official toll was 284; the weather service puts the real one at 600 to 1,000. A Galveston relief party found Rockport badly damaged, without help from the mainland, and brought food by boat.

What the plaque says

First Baptist Church of Rockport Organized in 1873, the First Baptist Church of Rockport originally was located on S. Church Street. L. D. Young served as the first pastor. The hurricane of 1919 destroyed the first church building, but the members built a new structure at the corner of Live Oak and Main Streets the following year. They joined with Rockport's Methodist and Episcopal congregations to form an ecumenical Sunday School. Throughout its history, the First Baptist Church of Rockport has served the community with a variety of worship, educational, and outreach programs. (1991)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fulton Mansion State Historic Site — 1.7 mi
  A French Second Empire house of 1874-77 on Aransas Bay, paid for with hides and tallow, with gas lights, central heat and hot running water no other house nearby had.
• Goose Island State Park — 7.7 mi
  A bayside park between St. Charles and Aransas bays, home of the Big Tree, the state champion coastal live oak, thought to be more than a thousand years old.
• Port Aransas — 14 mi
  The fishing town at the north end of Mustang Island, reached by a free state ferry that crosses the ship channel day and night, with a university marine lab begun in a one-room shack.
• Aransas National Wildlife Refuge — 24 mi
  Blackjack Peninsula's refuge on San Antonio Bay, winter home of the only wild migrating flock of whooping cranes, which fell to about fifty birds and now numbers over five hundred.

More markers nearby

• Connie Hagar — 0.8 mi
• Aransas County — 0.8 mi
• Rockport — 0.8 mi
• First Presbyterian Church of Rockport — 0.8 mi