First Methodist Church of Borger

The church organized in 1926 under a name that dated from the slavery debate. The Handbook of Texas says delegates from slaveholding states walked out of the 1844 Methodist General Conference, and in 1845 Texas Methodists voted to join the new Methodist Episcopal Church, South. In 1939 it reunited with two other branches as the Methodist Church, bringing more than 450,000 of that body's 475,021 Texas members. A second union in 1968 formed the United Methodist Church, whose uniting conference met in Dallas and called for an end to segregated jurisdictions.

What the plaque says

A. P. "ACE" Borger purchased 240 acres of land here in January 1926 and began to establish a new town. Within ninety days, the oil field town named for Borger had a population of more than 50,000 people. The Rev. W. M. Lane, the presiding elder of the Amarillo district of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, visited Borger and decided to establish a church. The Rev. Orion W. Carter conducted the first worship service in the local grocery store. By July 1926 the church was formally organized by Carter with 15 charter members, and a 36' x 60' church building was erected by Guy Rich. By the end of the year the Sunday School had an enrollment of 250, and women's and youth programs were established. An addition was built in 1928 to accommodate the growing membership. A second church structure, located on the corner of West Second and North Hedgecoke, was erected in 1930. The edifice served the congregation until 1952, when a third sanctuary was constructed at West Second and North McGee streets. An educational building was added in 1960. The congregation has grown with the city of Borger, and maintains a strong community presence. (1997)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Hutchinson County Museum — 0.5 mi
  Borger's museum on the three-mile Main Street of a 1926 oil boom town that drew 45,000 people in ninety days and was put under martial law in 1929.
• Lake Meredith National Recreation Area — 11 mi
  A Canadian River reservoir in 200-foot breaks, built to water the Panhandle's cities, that fell to a record 26 feet deep in 2013 and still rises and falls with the drought.
• Alibates Flint Quarries National Monument — 18 mi
  Hand-dug pits on a mesa above the Canadian River where people quarried banded flint for thousands of years and traded it across the Plains, seen on a ranger-led climb.
• Carson County Square House Museum — 22 mi
  The 1880s ranch cottage that is the oldest house in the town of Panhandle, at the heart of a twenty-one-building museum of the plains from mammoth hunters to the oil boom.

More markers nearby

• Grand Hotel and Grand Hardware Building — 0.4 mi
• Twentieth Century Club — 0.5 mi
• Beale Road — 1.0 mi
• Site of John and Maggie Weatherly Half-Dugout Site — 1.0 mi