Velasco Methodist Church

The church's rebuilding follows the town's fortunes. Velasco had about 3,000 people when the 1900 hurricane wrecked it, and recovery was slow: by 1914 the population was near 1,000 and one of the two newspapers was gone. In 1929 the Brazos was diverted south of town, leaving the old channel as a protected harbor. The Depression pushed the population down to about 400, with a dozen businesses. Wartime chemical-plant construction then lifted it from 900 in 1940 to 5,200 in 1950, and in 1957 Velasco joined Freeport.

What the plaque says

Velasco Methodist Church Methodist circuit riding ministers were conducting worship services in the Velasco area as early as the 1830s. After the original townsite was destroyed in the hurricane of 1875, a new one developed further inland. Led by the Rev. John L. Sullivan, Velasco Methodist church was formally organized in 1893. A brick sanctuary, erected in 1894, served the congregation until it was destroyed in the 1900 hurricane. A new sanctuary was completed in 1904. Rebuilding again after hurricane damage in 1932, the church has continued to serve the people of Brazoria County. (1988)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Brazoria National Wildlife Refuge — 7.6 mi
  Coastal prairie, salt marsh and bays between Freeport and Christmas Bay, where an auto tour along Big Slough passes wintering geese, ducks and wading birds in the tens of thousands.
• Levi Jordan Plantation State Historic Site — 17 mi
  A sugar and cotton plantation on the San Bernard River whose enslaved builders and their descendants left one of the best-preserved African American archeological sites in Texas.
• Varner-Hogg Plantation State Historic Site — 22 mi
  A Brazos sugar plantation built by enslaved people for the Patton family, later leased convict labor and Hogg family oil, now told through Rachel Patton and Sarah Ford.
• Galveston Island State Park — 29 mi
  A cattle ranch willed to the state that now runs the full width of Galveston Island, from two miles of Gulf beach across dunes and prairie to the marshes of West Galveston Bay.

More markers nearby

• Site of Town of Old Velasco — steps away
• Colonel Robert M. Coleman — 0.4 mi
• Four Miles Southeast to the Original Town of Velasco — 0.6 mi
• R. O'Hara Lanier School — 0.7 mi