First United Methodist Church of Humble

The boom the services followed began in 1904, when oil was found nearby and the townsite was laid out. Within months the Lone Star Hotel was up, thirty wells were completed and some 10,000 people lived in the area, and by 1905 the Humble oilfield was the largest producing field in Texas. A bank, a theater, a dry-goods store and hotels followed, and in 1909 the Oil City News. Production fell off by 1906, the population dropped to 7,500, and the community lost its original town government. By 1914 only 3,000 residents were reported.

What the plaque says

First United Methodist Church of Humble Founded in 1886, Humble was an oil boom town in 1907 when the Rev. J. T. Browning of Houston began conducting Methodist worship services for residents of the area. The services were first held in a building that had housed a bottle factory. In 1908, this church was organized with 37 charter members. The following year, the congregation constructed their first building, a small frame structure later destroyed by fire. Subsequent church facilities have reflected the continued growth of the congregation and community. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836 - 1986

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sam Houston Park and the Heritage Society — 18 mi
  Ten historic buildings gathered in a downtown park below the skyscrapers, among them the 1870 house of the Reverend Jack Yates, built five years after emancipation.
• Emancipation Park — 19 mi
  The Third Ward park that freedpeople bought for Juneteenth in 1872, rebuilt in 2017 on Emancipation Avenue and still the center of the city's June 19 celebration.
• Buffalo Soldiers National Museum — 19 mi
  A museum in Houston's 1925 Light Guard Armory that tells the service of Black soldiers from the Revolutionary War onward, built from one veteran's thirty years of collecting.
• Rothko Chapel — 20 mi
  An octagonal chapel open to all faiths, built by the de Menils around fourteen dark canvases by Mark Rothko, with Barnett Newman's Broken Obelisk standing in the pool outside.

More markers nearby

• Humble Lodge No. 979, A.F. & A.M. — 0.4 mi
• City of Humble — 0.5 mi
• Moonshine Hill — 1.5 mi
• Saint Paul A. M. E. Church — 12 mi