Historical Marker
First Christian Church of Granbury
Granbury, Hood County · Texas
Erected 1977
The plaque ends with the lake. Work on De Cordova Bend Dam began on December 15, 1966, and H. B. Zachry Company was the contractor. The dam took its name from a bend in the Brazos named for the land agent Jacob De Cordova. Impoundment started on September 15, 1969. The reservoir holds 153,500 acre-feet and has 103 miles of shoreline. From the 1970s on, lakeshore developments set off a building boom, which is the growth the congregation's last sentence describes.
What the plaque says
First Christian Church of Granbury This church was organized in the 1870's with the aid of Addison and Randolph Clark. In 1873 they helped their father Joseph A. Clark establish the Add-Ran Male and Female College at Thorp Spring (3.8 miles northwest), which later became Texas Christian University of Fort Worth. The Clark Brothers shared responsibilities as the first pastors. In 1889 the men of the fellowship erected a frame sanctuary on property purchased from D.C. Cogdell. This congregation has grown rapidly since the completion of Lake Granbury in 1969. (1977)
Where it stands
32.43516, -97.81103 · Directions
Worth the stop nearby
- Granbury Courthouse Square — 1.5 miA National Register square of limestone storefronts around W. C. Dodson's Second Empire courthouse, whose clock tower citizens saved after a 1968 tornado.
- Acton State Historic Site — 7.4 miThe smallest state historic site in Texas, a grave plot holding Elizabeth Crockett, widow of David Crockett, under a 1913 statue of a pioneer woman shading her eyes toward the west.
- Dinosaur Valley State Park — 13 miTheropod 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.
- Cleburne State Park — 20 miA 1930s Civilian Conservation Corps park on the old Chisholm Trail crossing country, with a spring-fed lake, a hand-carved three-tiered spillway and a CCC bridge in Johnson County.