Midland Christian College

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm gonna do it justice. Two blocks west of where you're rolling right now, there once stood something this part of Texas doesn't often get credit for: a real, honest-to-goodness college. Midland Christian College, they called it.

A two-year, coeducational institution that opened its doors in 1910 and kept them open, against the odds, until 1921. H. R.

Garrett was the first president, and somebody had to be brave enough to take that job out here on the high plains. Now, picture the students getting to class. No automobiles pulling up to the curb.

No, these young scholars rode a horse-drawn bus to campus. A horse-drawn bus. You let that image settle in.

They bumped across the West Texas caliche, probably chewing a little dust every single morning, and then they sat down and edited their yearbook. They named it The Sandstorm. If that isn't a name that knows exactly where it lives, I don't know what is.

By 1917, some two hundred and fifty students were attending. That's a real enrollment for any college, let alone one sitting out in Midland, Texas, in the early twentieth century. But the finances, well, the finances had other ideas.

Financial stress forced the closure of the college in 1921. The three-story gray brick building that housed all of it, the classrooms, the dreams, the horse-drawn arrivals and the yearbook deadlines, was later razed. Gone.

Not a stone of it left to find two blocks west. Just the marker, and the story it carries.

What the marker says

2 blocks west to site of Midland Christian College A 2-year, coeducational college that functioned 1910-1921. H. R. Garrett was first president. Students rode horse-drawn bus to campus; edited yearbook, "The Sandstorm." Some 250 attended in 1917. Financial stress forced closure. The 3-story gray brick building was later razed. (1970)