Site of Odessa College

The college that replaced this one took eight years to arrive. On September 1, 1938, the Ector County school board called a bond election for a junior college, and the Odessa Junior College District was created on August 29, 1946. Murry H. Fly, superintendent of the county schools, also served as president. In its first year, with 184 students, classes met at Odessa High School after the school day. Voters approved $200,000 in bonds on May 15, 1948, and the first building, later Baskin Hall, was finished in 1949, when the college got its own board.

What the plaque says

Site of Odessa College Established through efforts of Odessa Townsite Co., which gave $12,000; a northern methodist group matched this fund in 1888. Rev. M. A. Daugherty, Pittsburgh, Pa., was placed in charge, and a 20-acre plot was allowed to the college. Erection of a 2-story building began in 1890. In 1891 classes for 14 students were taught by Miss Alice Wright, of Maine. A "Mystery" fire destroyed the college after one session. This church-sponsored college was never rebuilt. In 1946, the new Odessa college was founded to fulfill aims of leadership in education. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark, 1967.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• White-Pool House — 1.9 mi
  Odessa's oldest standing building, an 1887 brick house of a family the Texas and Pacific drew west, later cut into apartments for the oil boom and now a free house museum.
• Odessa Meteor Crater — 9.6 mi
  A shallow bowl in the ranchland southwest of Odessa where a shower of iron meteorites struck in the late Ice Age, with a trail down into it and a small museum on the rim.
• Midland Army Air Field Museum — 11 mi
  A hangar museum at Midland's airport, run by Commemorative Air Force volunteers, telling how a 1927 grass field became the bombardier college that graduated 6,627 officers in World War II.
• Permian Basin Petroleum Museum — 19 mi
  Midland's museum of the oil basin it sits on, from a restored diorama of the Permian reef to a 40-acre yard of drilling rigs and Jim Hall's Chaparral race cars.

More markers nearby

• Mrs. John L. Morris (Marjorie) — 0.2 mi
• W.T. Barrett Stadium — 0.4 mi
• The Jackrabbit — 1.2 mi
• Odessa — 1.2 mi