Palo Duro Baptist Church

The farm workers this church's Spanish mission served from 1960 came under an agreement signed on August 4, 1942, when the United States and Mexico began the Mexican Farm Labor Program. Braceros were promised a minimum wage of thirty cents an hour and decent shelter, food and sanitation. Texas growers at first stayed out and hired workers directly from Mexico, but by the end of the 1950s the state was receiving large numbers of braceros. Public Law 78 kept the program going until 1964, and more than 4.5 million braceros entered the United States between 1942 and 1964.

What the plaque says

Palo Duro Baptist Church has its origins in Union School, which was built by settlers around 1893. Area residents held a non-denominational Sunday School in the facility. In 1901, Baptists living in the Palo Duro community, named for the creek that crosses northeastern Deaf Smith County, held a revival at the school. Shortly thereafter, on October 26, 1901, 12 charter members organized Palo Duro Baptist Church. The Rev. J.F. Killman served as pastor for the congregation, which at first met one weekend a month. In 1905, area pioneers John and Janette Womble offered property for a church building. The congregation completed a structure in 1906, which was paid for by community donations. Methodists also used the new facility. The congregation grew and declined through its early years, reflecting trends in the area's population. The church was a charter member of the Amarillo Baptist Association, which formed in 1953. In 1954, Palo Duro Baptist Church participated in a televised service at the KGNC television studio in Amarillo. Palo Duro Baptist Church has a rich history of giving and outreach. In 1960, the congregation began a Spanish mission for Bracero farm workers; after the program ended, the congregation supported Spanish-speaking congregations in Hereford and Amarillo. The church has also aided shut-ins and the elderly through gift baskets, hosted orphans from the Buckner's Baptist Children's Home, awarded scholarships to students, worked with children with disabilities, participated in prison ministry, and organized local and foreign missions. Today, Palo Duro Baptist Church continues to be a beacon of light in the Texas panhandle and throughout the world. (2010)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Cadillac Ranch — 13 mi
  Ten Cadillacs from 1949 to 1963 planted nose down in a pasture west of Amarillo by the Ant Farm collective in 1974, on private land where visitors are let in to paint them.
• Buffalo Lake National Wildlife Refuge — 15 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.
• Magnolia Station, Vega — 16 mi
  A restored 1920s Magnolia filling station on Vega's Main Street, a barbershop after the pumps stopped in 1953, saved with a National Park Service grant.
• Helium Centennial Time Columns Monument — 17 mi
  Four sealed time capsules raised in Amarillo in 1968 for helium's centennial, in the city that for years produced almost all the world's commercial helium from the Cliffside field.

More markers nearby

• Frying Pan Ranch — 9.3 mi
• Umbarger — 13 mi
• Randall County — 13 mi
• Town of Dawn — 14 mi