First Baptist Church of Santo

Santo has worn several names. After the Texas and Pacific came in 1880 the community moved to its present site and was called Cresco. A near wreck, caused by confusion between Cresco and Cosco, led to a new name, Sparta, which the post office rejected in favor of Santo. The Handbook of Texas gives two origins for Santo: John Santo Statti, a Texas and Pacific agent, or a pioneer named John Adam Santo. The church, chartered under an oak in 1872, is older than all three.

What the plaque says

First Baptist Church of Santo The oldest continually active Baptist Church in Palo Pinto County, this congregation was chartered on November 3, 1872, under an oak tree near the Santo East Cemetery. Originally known as the Missionary Baptist Church of Christ at Cottonwood Grove on Palo Pinto Creek, it began with eight charter members. The present congregational name was adopted by the 1930s. For well over a century, the First Baptist Church of Santo has been active in community service, mission endeavors, associational work and the licensing and ordination of ministers. (1982)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lake Mineral Wells State Park and Trailway — 18 mi
  A Cross Timbers park on the old Camp Wolters grounds, built around a 1922 water-supply lake for a spa town, with Penitentiary Hollow's rock climbing and a 20-mile trailway.
• Chandor Gardens — 26 mi
  A portrait painter's English-and-Chinese garden rooms, blasted and planted from a bare 3.5-acre hillside in Weatherford beginning in 1936, abandoned after 1978 and reopened by the city in 2002.
• Granbury Courthouse Square — 27 mi
  A National Register square of limestone storefronts around W. C. Dodson's Second Empire courthouse, whose clock tower citizens saved after a 1968 tornado.
• Dinosaur Valley State Park — 34 mi
  Theropod and sauropod trackways of about 113 million years ago in the bed of the Paluxy River, a National Natural Landmark where R. T. Bird found the first distinct sauropod tracks in 1937.

More markers nearby

• Santo East Cemetery — 1.2 mi
• William Whipple Johnson — 7.3 mi
• Old County Jail — 12 mi
• Palo Pinto Cemetery — 12 mi