First Christian Church

Crowell took its name from George T. Crowell, who owned the townsite. M. F. Thacker sold the lots and became the first postmaster in 1891, and J. L. Harper began publishing the Foard County News that same year. Before the railroad, mail came to Crowell from Vernon. By 1900 the town had 500 residents and businesses including a hotel, a cotton gin and a gristmill. The Handbook of Texas lists agribusiness and the manufacture of sporting goods as its leading industries in later years. Crowell had 1,509 people and twenty-seven businesses in 1980, and 1,141 people in 2000.

What the plaque says

(Organized 1906) An early church in Crowell. First officials: Pastor, J. E. Chase; Elders, J. W. Cope, S. J. Fenton; Deacons, E. P. Bomar, F. H. Crews; Clerk, Ben Henderson; Treasurer, J. H. Self. Site, gift of C. A. Andrews, was chosen by Mrs. Ida Cheek, Robt. Cole, Jim Meason. Original church building had 61 years continuous use. (1969)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fire Hall Museum — steps away
  Crowell's local museum in the 1922 firehouse on Main Street, in a county-seat town that was almost wiped away by the tornado of April 1942 and rebuilt.
• Copper Breaks State Park — 9.6 mi
  Red badlands on the Pease River between Quanah and Crowell, streaked with the green copper that lured a Civil War general here to mine, with longhorns and a dark-sky designation.
• Quanah, Acme and Pacific Depot Museum — 22 mi
  The Spanish Colonial Revival depot of a little railroad that set out for El Paso and never got past Floydada, now Hardeman County's museum alongside the county's 1890 jail.
• Red River Valley Museum — 26 mi
  Vernon's museum on College Drive, with rooms on the Waggoner ranch empire, Doan's Crossing and early Vernon, and the largest known collection of Electra Waggoner Biggs's art.

More markers nearby

• Robert L. Foard — steps away
• First Officials of Foard County — steps away
• Foard County — 2.8 mi
• Site of the Town of Margaret — 8.2 mi