Naruna Baptist Church

Naruna's post office opened in 1878, and by 1884 the community had three churches, a school and about 150 people shipping cotton and livestock. Then it stalled: by 1890 estimates had fallen to twenty-five, perhaps because the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe's Lampasas-Brownwood line, finished in 1885, passed to the north and drew people to towns on the tracks. The post office closed in 1906, and mail came through Lampasas. The school joined the Lampasas schools in 1944, and about forty-five people lived at Naruna from the 1970s to 2000.

What the plaque says

Naruna Baptist Church Settlers came to the Naruna area as early as the 1840s, and the town was named by its first postmaster, William M. Spitler, who came to Texas on the riverboat Naruna. Residents formed Providence Baptist Church in July 1877 under the leadership of Ira Reese. The congregation called its first minister in 1878 and later became part of Austin Baptist Association. Members held baptisms in Deer Creek and built a sanctuary in the early 1890s, sharing space with local Masons. The congregation changed its name to Naruna Baptist Church in 1932. Local population declined after the railroad bypassed the town, but the church continues to serve members through worship and charity work. (2003)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Hancock Springs Park — 9.1 mi
  Lampasas's city park on Sulphur Creek, with a spring-fed swimming pool that holds about 69 degrees all year, the walls of the old bathhouse and a golf course.
• Colorado Bend State Park — 11 mi
  Old ranch country on the Colorado above Lake Buchanan, where a spring-fed creek drops 70 feet over fern-covered travertine at Gorman Falls.
• Inks Lake State Park — 18 mi
  A state park on a constant-level lake of the Colorado, between Buchanan and Inks dams, with pink granite and gneiss at the water and CCC work along Park Road 4.
• Inks Dam National Fish Hatchery — 19 mi
  A free federal hatchery below Inks Dam on the Colorado, with thirty production ponds that draw birds and a look at how fish are raised from egg to harvest.

More markers nearby

• Dobyville Cemetery — 6.2 mi
• Mr. & Mrs. Jacob Wolf — 6.2 mi
• Nix — 8.6 mi
• Hancock Springs Bathhouse — 9.0 mi