McLean Methodist Church

McLean grew up around a railroad water well. In 1901 the Choctaw, Oklahoma and Texas dug a well and built a switch three miles inside Gray County, and the next year rancher Alfred Rowe laid out a townsite there, named for William P. McLean, a legislator and railroad commissioner. A windmill pumped water from a well in the middle of Main Street, and residents hauled it home in barrels and buckets. Hogs and watermelons left by the carload, the town lost county-seat bids in 1908 and 1919, and by 1940 it had six churches.

What the plaque says

McLean Methodist Church This congregation, organized in the early 1900s, is thought to be the oldest denominational church in Gray County. The Rev. G. R. Fort served as first pastor. Methodists in McLean met in a one-room schoolhouse until their first sanctuary was constructed at this site in 1904. Groups within the congregation, including Ladies Home Missionary Society, have provided active service and leadership to the community. Descendants of some of the original members still worship here. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836 - 1986

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Phillips 66 Station, McLean — steps away
  A 1929 cottage-style Phillips 66 station on First Street in McLean, the town I-40 went around last and whose Route 66 business district stayed much as it was.
• Devil's Rope and Old Route 66 Museum — 0.3 mi
  Barbed wire and the Texas road in McLean's old brassiere factory: the fence that closed the open range, from the salesmen who sold it to the Panhandle ranches it divided.
• Tower Station and U-Drop Inn — 20 mi
  Shamrock's 1936 Conoco station and cafe at the corner of Route 66 and US-83, sketched in the dirt with a nail, named by a schoolboy and saved by the town.
• Old Mobeetie Jail Museum — 22 mi
  The 1886 stone jail of the Panhandle's first county seat, the buffalo hunters' Hidetown on Sweetwater Creek that ran the courts for fifteen counties before losing its fort, railroad hopes and county seat.

More markers nearby

• Eldridge Post Office — 10 mi
• Old Pakan School — 10 mi
• Old Mobeetie Trail — 13 mi
• Lela School — 14 mi