St. Paul Lutheran Church

Missouri Synod preachers came in from elsewhere before the congregation had a pastor. In 1886 August Ruhland, working out of Dallas, reached Wichita Falls, where his uncle lived, and visited Lutherans in Archer County and Olney. By 1892 Iowa Park had fifteen families using the means of grace, and John Schulenburg, living in Fort Worth, covered Wichita Falls, Olney and Vernon. The first resident pastor, Mehlhorn, was installed in 1894 and died about eighteen months later. His successor, Francis Rudi, found a country that had raised no crops for several years, and the mission board paid his horses' feed.

What the plaque says

St. Paul Lutheran Church Lutheran missionary work in the Wichita Falls area was begun in 1886. This congregation was organized September 2, 1894, by the Rev. Robert L. Mehlhorn, first resident missionary. Worship services were held in private homes or borrowed facilities until the first church building was constructed at this site in 1904, during the pastorate of the Reverend G. A. Obenhaus. St. Paul has operated a Christian day school since 1914. The congregation became self-sustaining in 1919. A larger brick church building replaced the original structure in 1927. (1981)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Kell House Museum — 0.3 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 — 0.9 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 — 12 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.
• Clay County 1890 Jail Museum — 18 mi
  Henrietta's 1890 stone jail a block from the domed courthouse, now the county museum, with its original cells, a gallows that was never used and the sheriff's family quarters.

More markers nearby

• Wichita Falls Junior College — steps away
• Bethania Hospital — steps away
• Lloyd Ruby — 0.2 mi
• Wichita General Hospital — 0.3 mi