New Hope Baptist Church #3

The church took its setting from a community that has since vanished. La Casa began when James C. Bargsley built a log cabin there in 1880, and by 1890 it had a post office in E. T. Bradford's general store. The population reached thirty in 1910 and seventy-five in 1920, then dropped to twenty by 1930, when the post office closed. By 1980 no population was reported at all. The church sits on FM 717, about seven miles south of Caddo.

What the plaque says

New Hope Baptist Church #3 Thirty former members of the nearby Macedonia Baptist Church organized the New Hope Baptist Church #3 in 1893 with The Rev. C.J. McDonald serving as its first pastor. The congregation shared facilities with its parent church until 1899 when they built a sanctuary on two acres acquired from J.C. and Laura Bargsley. The sanctuary was destroyed by fire in 1902 and replaced by a new building. Church members met once a month until 1948 when a full-time pastor was called. In 1993 the congregation celebrated its 100th year of service to the rural LaCasa community. (1993)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Old Rip at the Eastland County Courthouse — 17 mi
  A horned lizard in a glass-topped casket in the 1928 Eastland courthouse, the creature said to have come out alive from the old building's cornerstone after thirty-one years.
• Conrad Hilton Center and Mobley Hotel — 23 mi
  The 40-room oil-boom hotel in Cisco that Conrad Hilton bought in 1919 when a bank deal fell through, now a museum of the Hilton start and of Cisco's 1927 Santa Claus bank robbery.

More markers nearby

• Mount Zion Cemetery — 2.3 mi
• Wayland School — 9.0 mi
• Roaring Ranger — 9.6 mi
• First Oil Well Drilled in Eastland County — 9.6 mi