Methodist Episcopal Church, South, of Premont

Premont was a land promotion before it was a church. The site lay in the Los Olmos y Loma Blanca grant, issued to Ignacio de la Peña in December 1831 and held by the Peña family for about thirty years. Charles Premont and Andrés Canales founded the town in 1908, and a post office opened in 1909. Settlers rushed in from 1910 to 1912, and the San Antonio and Aransas Pass built a stop in 1914. The promises outran the farms, and population fell to about 600 by 1925. The first oil well came in on May 12, 1933.

What the plaque says

Methodist Episcopal Church, South, of Premont Development of Premont began in 1904; the post office opened on January 13, 1909. Visiting ministers occasionally held church services in a surveyors' and land agents' bunkhouse. About 1910, Methodists erected the town's first church, a 30' x 60' stucco chapel, sharing it with other faiths. Sometimes open also to secular gatherings, that building was used in 1943-44 by the public school system. In 1954 an educational annex was built and in 1956 the old church was razed and present sanctuary erected on the original site. (1975)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Don Pedrito Jaramillo Shrine — 7.6 mi
  The grave and shrine of the folk healer of Los Olmos, a place of prayer where South Texans still leave candles and letters for the curandero who took no fee.
• Heritage Museum at Falfurrias — 8.9 mi
  A free town museum of ranch gear, a Texas Ranger room and 99,000 photo negatives, in the town Edward Lasater built around his railroad and his Jersey cows.
• King Ranch Visitor Center — 18 mi
  The bus-tour gate to a working ranch of about 825,000 acres, founded on Santa Gertrudis Creek in 1853 and worked from the start by the Kineños, families from Cruillas in Tamaulipas.
• Kenedy Ranch Museum of South Texas — 23 mi
  A museum in the Kenedy Pasture Company's 1927 office in Sarita, telling how Mifflin Kenedy and three generations of his family shaped the Wild Horse Desert, with murals and an audio guide.

More markers nearby

• James Abijah Brooks — 8.7 mi
• Falfurrias — 9.2 mi
• Presbyterian Pan American School — 17 mi
• First Producing Gas Well in Kleberg County — 18 mi