Former Site of Saint Anthony's Catholic School

The parish this school served has since built again. Saint Anthony's present church, finished about 1955, is a gable-roofed building of buff brick with restrained Spanish detail, tapered buttresses, narrow slot windows and a slender bell tower topped by an octagonal lantern. The old red-brick school became the Deaf Smith County museum on Sampson Street, where a recreated general store, a one-room school and a nonsectarian chapel lit by stained-glass windows from early county churches fill the rooms. Outside stand a half-dugout and a Santa Fe caboose.

What the plaque says

Former Site of Saint Anthony's Catholic School Since its establishment in 1914 Saint Anthony's Catholic School has played a prominent role in preparing young students for advanced classwork. Initial classes were held in a former Deaf Smith County courthouse converted for church purposes by Father Salvator di Giovanni, S.A., and his assistant, Brother James. A new structure was built in 1927 to house a growing student enrollment and served as the site of Saint Anthony's Catholic School prior to their relocation in 1955. A history museum, exhibiting local pioneer artifacts, has occupied this building since 1966. (1993).

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Deaf Smith County Historical Museum — steps away
  Hereford's county museum in an early Catholic school: the Windmill City's pioneers, a half-dugout and caboose outside, and work by the Italian prisoners held south of town in the war.
• Buffalo Lake National Wildlife Refuge — 18 mi
  A 1938 Depression-era lake on Tierra Blanca Creek that has gone dry, now 7,664 acres of shortgrass, cottonwood canyon and a prairie dog town on the High Plains south of Umbarger.

More markers nearby

• Two-Wheel Fire Hose Reel — steps away
• Ghost Towns of Deaf Smith County — steps away
• Deaf Smith County — steps away
• Pioneer Windmill — 0.3 mi