St. Joseph Catholic Church

The diocese the plaque names is younger than the mission. Pope John XXIII created the Diocese of San Angelo on October 16, 1961, from thirty-four counties taken from the dioceses of Amarillo, Austin, El Paso and Dallas-Fort Worth. It began formally on January 24, 1962, when Thomas J. Drury was consecrated its first bishop, and San Angelo's Sacred Heart Parish, founded in 1884, became the cathedral. The new Diocese of Lubbock took five counties in 1983. In 1992 the diocese counted about 78,850 Catholics, 73 percent of them Hispanic, in forty-nine parishes and twenty-four missions.

What the plaque says

St. Joseph Catholic Church began in 1948 as a mission of St. Mary's Church to provide for the needs of the Hispanic community of Odessa. The Catholic presence in west Texas can be traced back as far as the early 1500s with the arrival of explorers Cabeza de Vaca and Francisco Coronado, followed by Catholic missions. With westward expansion, settlements created the need for permanent church homes for the community. The first record of a Catholic priest ministering in Odessa was in 1904 when Monsignor Nolan preached at the old courthouse. Priests occasionally visited individual homes but no regularly scheduled services were held in Odessa until November 1937. St. Mary's Church was established in 1938 and soon the need was evident for a Catholic church for the Hispanic community. In 1950, the church purchased an old army barracks to serve as the St. Joseph Mission. In 1955, father John Lucassen was the first full-time priest. The mission grew throughout the 1950s and, in 1965, the church was raised from a mission to a parish. The church continued to grow and serve the community of Odessa with spiritual guidance and outreach. St. Joseph established its own missions, including St. Martin de Porras and St. Anthony. St. Anthony quickly grew to be a recognized parish. From its humble beginnings as a mission to a thriving parish, serving more than 1,400 registered households, St. Joseph Catholic Church is a significant part of the Diocese of San Angelo, continuing to serve the spiritual needs of the catholic community of Odessa. (2017)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• White-Pool House — 0.7 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 — 9.4 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 — 18 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

• Site of Blackshear High School — 0.3 mi
• Site of The Dawson Saloon — 1.0 mi
• Odessa Telephone Exchange — 1.0 mi
• Odessa Land & Townsite Company — 1.0 mi