White Deer United Methodist Church

The 1951 tornado on this plaque was one of several blows to a town the oil boom had briefly swollen. The Skellytown boom, in the White Deer school district, peaked in 1926, and White Deer, about 200 people in 1925, reached 3,000 in 1928 before its population began to fall. A disastrous fire struck in 1931, and tornadoes hit in 1947 and 1951. By 1954 the town was down to 629. Moderate growth returned in the late 1950s, as White Deer settled into shipping the area's grain and cattle.

What the plaque says

White Deer United Methodist Church A Methodist Church was first formed in White Deer in 1911. The Rev. W.B. McKeown, who worked to form several panhandle Methodist congregations, organized the church's seven charter members. The congregation shared the town's school building with several denominations until the Presbyterians later in 1911 constructed a church building, which also was shared with the other churches in White Deer. In 1918, trustees of the Methodist Church purchased six lots for the construction of their own sanctuary. The building, completed in 1922, was situated on the northeast corner of West Fourth and Doucette Streets. The church's first parsonage was erected in 1926. When a tornado devastated White Deer and destroyed the town's schools in 1951, the Methodist Church opened its doors as one of several temporary school sites. When the church outgrew its first structure, the congregation moved to a new site at the intersection of West Eighth and Main Streets in 1960. This new building, constructed at a cost of $96,000, was completed debt-free. Community outreach has been an important part of the church's ministry since its inception. Church women formed a ladies aid society in 1916 in support of missionary work, and the group is now known as the United Methodist Women; a Methodist men's organization was first organized in 1956. A community food pantry was begun as a ministry of the church in 2004 and it continues today as a joint effort between several churches and volunteers. White Deer United Methodist Church, the oldest continuously active congregation in the community, endures as a spiritual leader. (2010)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Carson County Square House Museum — 13 mi
  The 1880s ranch cottage that is the oldest house in the town of Panhandle, at the heart of a twenty-one-building museum of the plains from mammoth hunters to the oil boom.
• Woody Guthrie Folk Music Center — 14 mi
  The old Harris Drug Store in Pampa, where a young Woody Guthrie jerked sodas and found his first guitar, now a folk music center with Friday night jam sessions.
• White Deer Land Museum — 14 mi
  The 1916 Pampa office of the land company that sold a foreclosed British ranch to wheat farmers, with an annex holding one of the Panhandle's largest Red River War collections.
• Hutchinson County Museum — 21 mi
  Borger's museum on the three-mile Main Street of a 1926 oil boom town that drew 45,000 people in ninety days and was put under martial law in 1929.

More markers nearby

• First Presbyterian Church — 0.3 mi
• White Deer — 0.4 mi
• Jackson General Store — 0.5 mi
• Polish Settlers of White Deer — 0.8 mi