Site of Early Bowman Church

The church moved because a lake was coming. Construction of Lake Wichita closed Bowman's post office in 1900 and forced the community to move, and families lost a good deal of farmland. The church and school went about a mile south. The settlers, many of German descent, had arrived to farm in the mid-1880s, started a cemetery in 1885 and held Evangelical services in their school. By 1929 about twenty-five families were left, and the town claimed the state's largest commercial daisy garden and peach orchard.

What the plaque says

Site of Early Bowman Church Organized as "Wichita Class" in Stringtown (now Bowman) by settlers from northern U.S. For years German and English services were held in 1888. A parsonage was built beside the schoolhouse where members worshipped. In 1893 congregation was named "Bowman" in honor of Bishop Thomas Bowman. A church building was erected in 1897. In 1901 both church and parsonage were moved one mile south of town to this site. The church played host to 5 annual church conferences, 1900-1920. In 1932 it merged with First Church of Wichita Falls. (1970) Erected by Walter Ford annd Bowman Community.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Kell House Museum — 8.0 mi
  The 1909 Classic Revival house of Frank Kell, the miller and railroad builder who helped make Wichita Falls a city, shown by guided tour with its family furniture still in place.
• World's Littlest Skyscraper — 8.6 mi
  A four-story brick tower in downtown Wichita Falls, 40 feet tall and 10 feet wide, the leftover of a 1919 oil-boom office deal in which, the story goes, investors misread inches as feet.
• Lake Arrowhead State Park — 11 mi
  A prairie park on the north shore of the Wichita Falls water-supply lake, which drowned the town of Halsell in 1965-66, with mesquite campsites, a lighted pier and more than 200 bird species.
• Royal Theater — 15 mi
  Archer City's movie house, burned in 1965, given a false front for The Last Picture Show and brought back by the town in the 1990s as a working stage on Main Street.

More markers nearby

• Bowman Cemetery — 1.8 mi
• Call Field — 4.3 mi
• Wichita County — 5.3 mi
• Midwestern University Desegregation — 5.6 mi