Day Trips: Carmelite Monastery, Stanton
Adobe building was part of German colony that brought Catholicism and education to West Texas
By Gerald E. McLeod, Fri., May 27, 2016
The Carmelite Monastery in Stanton still dominates the town from a hill on an otherwise flat West Texas landscape.
Construction of the two-story monastery began in 1882, soon after six Carmelite friars arrived from Kansas at a railroad camp between what was to become Big Spring and Midland. The friars built the first Catholic Church between Fort Worth and El Paso, and enticed settlers to their German colony. Unfortunately, the West Texas weather conspired against the pioneers. In a little more than five years most of the farmers had given up and moved on. The monastery was all but abandoned by 1888. The last parish priest left in 1901.
The adobe building with wrap-around porches and Gothic pointed windows then became the Our Lady of Mercy Academy until 1938. As the first school in a large area of West Texas, the academy operated for 44 years by attracting students from as far away as New Mexico and Oklahoma. After standing vacant for years, the 132-year-old building is now undergoing a restoration by the nonprofit Martin County Convent Inc. So far, the roof and 4-foot-thick walls have been stabilized. The community hopes to turn the building into a visitor center and museum.
The Carmelite Monastery stands as a historical heirloom at 200 E. Carpenter St., a few blocks east of the county courthouse in Stanton. Eighteen miles east of Midland, Stanton has few other attractions to entice visitors off I-20.
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