Site of McKenzie College

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm just the voice carryin' it down the road. Back before the Civil War, out here in Red River County, there stood something people called an outstanding school of the southwest. Not a university town, not a city campus.

It started in a log cabin. That's where you begin when you mean business in 1841. The man behind it was the Reverend John W.P.

McKenzie, born in 1806, and he was no stranger to hard country. He had already ridden as a pioneer missionary to the Choctaws, and by 1838 he was circuit riding in Texas, covering ground most folks wouldn't cross on a dare. Then he planted something.

He established McKenzie College, right here, in a log cabin that probably didn't look like much from the outside. The thing is, something that starts that humble and then keeps going, well, you lean in a little closer. And it did keep going.

From that one log cabin, the school expanded to four large buildings sitting on nine hundred acres of Texas land. January 10, 1854, it received its charter, official and legal and carved into the record. At its height, three hundred boarding pupils enrolled every single year.

Three hundred young people, annually, out here in what was still very much the frontier edge of the southwest. Then the Civil War came through, the way it came through everything. And in 1869, McKenzie College closed.

The Reverend McKenzie himself lived until 1877, long enough to see what he had built, and long enough to see it end. What remains now is the site, the marker, and the story of a log cabin that once held up the sky for three hundred students a year.

What the marker says

Site of McKenzie College, an outstanding school of the southwest before the Civil War. Established in 1841 by the Reverend John W.P. McKenzie (1806-1877), pioneer missionary to the Choctaws, circuit rider in Texas in 1838. Opened in a log cabin, it expanded to four large buildings on 900 acres. Chartered January 10, 1854. Enrolled 300 boarding pupils annually. Closed in 1869.