Journey to Tascosa, Clarendon and Amarillo: Baptists of the Panhandle

As the summer winds to a close, the Texas Baptist Heritage Road Trip wends its final tour along the back roads of the vast Panhandle, where camp songs of cowboys, lowing longhorns and lonesome winds still echo under its spacious skies. Baptists helped settle these outposts and, along with others, brought the gospel of Christ to this part of the state.

Old Tascosa

Hispanic sheepherders from New Mexico first settled Atascosa, or “Boggy Creek,” in a green valley on the Canadian River in 1876. About the same time, cattlemen arrived in the area, purchased thousands of sections to establish the LIT, LX, Frying Pan and XIT ranches, and gradually fenced their holdings. Tascosa—as it was known—became a significant trade and supply center for these huge enterprises and anchored the south end of the Tascosa-Dodge City Trail.

The old stone courthouse for Oldham County in Tascosa, built in 1884, now houses the Bivins Museum.Soon blacksmith shops, saloons, general stores and a post office appeared. So did outlaws and their gunfights. In 1880, Oldham County was established, with Tascosa as its county seat, and citizens erected a stone courthouse. The Fort Worth-Denver railroad built across the northeastern corner of the territory in 1887. Because of the difficulty with hauling goods across two miles of deep sand, however, the town dwindled. By 1915, the population stood at just 15 residents.

Cal Farley Twenty-five years later, in June 1939, a World War I hero and wrestling champion sensed a vocational call to minister to homeless boys. Cal Farley and his wife, Mimi, established a ranch for boys at the Old Tascosa townsite, donated for the purpose by their friend, Julian Bivins. Today, Cal Farley’s Boys Ranch is a residential home to hundreds of young men and women who attend Christian schools and a nondenominational chapel, learn integrity along with a strong work ethic, and grow up surrounded by people who love and serve them in Christ’s name. Individual Baptists and churches, together with other faith groups, have joined to support this work for 77 years. What remains of Old Tascosa is the stone courthouse, now the Bivins Museum, and Boot Hill Cemetery, where colorful early settlers were buried.

Clarendon

After Mobeetie, or “Hide Town” (1874), and Tascosa (1876), Clarendon became the third Panhandle settlement—and the only one that didn’t become a ghost town. In 1878, a Methodist clergyman and land agent, Lewis H. Carhart, dreamed of opening a colony based upon Christian principles, where cowboys who had alcohol addictions could find healing. He purchased land on the Salt Fork of the Red River and founded Clarendon, a “sobriety settlement,” which soon became known as “Saint’s Roost.” Nine years later, when the Fort Worth and Denver Railroad bypassed their town, the citizens moved their homes and businesses about five miles south to the railroad tracks and built a depot, assuring the town’s survival. Because of this foresight, Clarendon is the oldest surviving town in the Panhandle.

First Baptist Church in Clarendon is pictured in this 1910 postcard.Baptists organized a church in Clarendon in the early 1890s, after the relocated town became a bustling center of commerce and government, especially supporting the RO ranch of Sir Alfred Rowe on Skillet Creek and the JA ranch of Charles Goodnight and partner John Adair. (Incidentally, Rowe went down with the Titanic in April 1912.) By the time of Adair’s death in 1885, the JA comprised 1,325,000 acres, including Palo Duro Canyon, where more than 100,000 head of Goodnight’s carefully bred cattle grazed. Clarendon also is home to St. Mary’s Catholic Church (established 1540s under Mexico), St. John the Baptist Episcopal Church (organized in1893), the oldest congregations of their denominations in the Panhandle, as well as Clarendon College, founded in 1898. Old “Saints Roost” about five miles north of the present town of Clarendon, is now under water. The old settlement was flooded in 1968 to form the new Greenbelt Lake, just after the old cemetery was removed to a new site on State Highway 70.

Amarillo 

Amarillo was founded in the spring of 1888 after the railroad was constructed across the plains 25 miles north of Palo Duro Canyon. About 150 citizens soon made plans to establish churches and schools. The Union Church, or Parker’s Chapel, shared by all denominations, was completed in the summer of 1889, and in this building, a few weeks later in September, Baptists organized a church with 16 charter members.

The original building of First Baptist Church in Amarillo served the congregation from 1889 to 1908.Without a pastor and with few resources, this little band purchased land and built a 36-foot by 60-foot sanctuary with a high ceiling, tower and double front doors at 500 Pierce Street. It took them less than a year. In 1891, church members called their first pastor, George Walter Capps. The original church building now sits on the northeast corner of First Baptist Church’s present campus, at Thirteenth and Tyler streets, built from 1926 to 1930.

In the years since, First Baptist has established daughter churches—East Side (Cleveland Street) Mission (1910), Bushland Mission (1914), River Road Mission (1938), Victory Baptist Church (1940s), Immanuel Baptist Church (1940s), Paramount Baptist Church (1954), Buchanan Street Chapel (1994) and High Plains Community Church (1998).

First Baptist Church in Amarillo marks 127 years of ministry this month.For decades, the church led the Southern Baptist Convention in Training Union and cooperative missions giving under the leadership of pastors J. Howard Williams, Winfred Moore, Ben Loring and current pastor Howard Batson.

The congregation is noted for its outreach to international communities, both in Amarillo and through its mission partnerships around the world in Alaska, Brazil, Cambodia, Chile, China, Hawaii, Japan, Kenya, Korea, Laos, Malaysia, Mexico, Minnesota, Nigeria, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Uganda, Vietnam, Zambia and other countries. More than 10 percent of worshippers who attend church at First Baptist leave Amarillo to participate in hands-on-missions each year. Vibrant, joyful and flourishing, the church celebrates 127 years of remarkable ministry this next month as it continues to serve its community to the glory of God.

Together with believers of other faiths, Baptists of the Panhandle have shared the gospel, ministered to others and lived faithfully as they have joined God in his redemptive work. This summer, we have traveled across the great state of Texas to become reacquainted with some of our early pioneer faith family. I hope these adventures have both captured your imaginations and challenged your heart to live more intentionally for Christ. They have mine. May God help us to continue to be faithful stewards of this rich heritage as we serve our Lord Jesus together.

Contact Information and Other Sites of Interest

• Tour Cal Farley’s Boys Ranch, on US 385, 36 miles northwest of Amarillo, which occupies the site of Old Tascosa in Oldham County. From Amarillo, take FM 1061 to US 385 head north (right), and turn right at the well-marked entrance. The ranch headquarters is the first building on the right; open daily 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., closed major holidays. Free tours of Boys Ranch, which include historic Boot Hill Cemetery and the Julian Bivins Museum, can be scheduled for almost any time. Reservations are not required but appreciated. Call (800) 687-3722 weekdays or (806) 534-2211 on weekends. Write to Box 1890, Amarillo 79174-0001. Learn more about Boys Ranch here. Learn more about Cal Farley here.
• See Palo Duro Canyon, 11450 State Hwy Park Rd 5, Canyon, TX 79015; Phone (806) 488-2227. Learn more about hours and details here.
• Enjoy the Panhandle-Plains Museum in Canyon, which contains more than 3 million items, including historical artifacts pertaining to the museum’s permanent exhibits on American western life and agricultural history, art, paleontology, geology, Native American art, firearms, antique vehicles, decorative arts and furniture, petroleum industry, sports and textiles. The museum also features the outdoor Pioneer Town that includes a livery, saloon, schoolhouse, pioneer cabin and other buildings. This museum is located at 2503 4th Ave, Canon, TX 79015; Phone (806) 651-2244. For more information, click here.
• Charles Goodnight Visit Goodnight Cemetery. See the old ghost town of Goodnight, where many buildings used to stand. Goodnight Baptist Church, 1903-1981, closed when lightening struck the building and burned the church to the ground. Baptists here supported Goodnight Baptist Academy from 1898 to 1917. R.C. Buckner opened the Panhandle department of Buckner Children’s Home with 14 orphans in September 1918, with the support of his friend, Charles Goodnight. The Baptist General Convention of Texas gave the deed to the Goodnight Academy and Institute campus to the Orphans’ Home, complete with a substantial, red-brick administration building built in 1907. The property included several dormitories, a chapel, a 1,000-volume library and 100 acres of adjoining farm land with stock. Area Baptist churches supplied the children with goods and food, and the congregations generously supported the Buckner Panhandle department and rejoiced to have the responsibility for the children’s welfare. Buckner operated this extension campus until his death in 1919. The children moved back to Dallas in 1920, and the property was then returned to Colonel Goodnight. In turn, he gave it to the local school district to be used for a public high school. Learn more about the famous Baptist cattleman Charles Goodnight here.
• Drive to Groom, site of a 190-foot freestanding cross, visible from 20 miles away. Also visit the life-size Stations of the Cross and other bronzes, including art depicting Christ’s crucifixion and his empty tomb. The exhibit is free, as are spaces for camping and RVs. Learn more here.
• Visit the Fort Smith, Santa-Fe Wagon Trail, which may be seen from several sites in the Panhandle. Hunt for glimpses of still-visible, deeply rutted wagon trail tracks that stretched from Fort Smith, Ark., across the Oklahoma and Texas Panhandle plains, to northern New Mexico and Santa Fe. Made by wagon caravans and the Gold Rush seekers in the 1840s, they were carved in the sod 50 years before the first railroads arrived in the area. Many of the trails are noted by historical markers, like the 1840 Gregg Route on State Highway 136, about 12 miles northeast of Amarillo, and the 1849 Marcy Route at State Highway 136, about 20 miles along the same road, and another found at the northwest corner of the Palo Duro High School campus in Amarillo. The Josiah Gregg Memorial Monument marks this spot today. For more information, click here.
• Explore Texas State Historical Markers related to Texas Baptist churches here.