West Point Christian Church
SW of Yukon, Yukon, OKWest Point Christian Church represents nearly a century of service to the spiritual needs of a rural community. It is significant historically for the continuity of this service, especially in the face of an accelerating trend away from the small country church. It is also significant for its architecture - quite modest, completely traditional, inside and out, and excepting a recent addition attached tangentially to the back, remarkably well preserved with almost total integrity.
This section of old Oklahoma was opened to settlement in the Run of 1889. A Sunday School sprang up almost immediately. By 1890 it was housed in a "soddie" just west of the present church. When a small frame schoolhouse was erected to replace the sod structure, the Sunday School moved into it. West Point Christian Church itself was organized Sept. 6, 1894. Briefly the congregation moved to nearby Thurston, a small town that quickly died. In April 1898, and back in its former meeting place at West Point School, the congregation began a campaign for funds with which to build a proper church of its own. An acre of land east of the soddie was donated by Charles Little and the present building was largely hand-built by the congregation. It was dedicated July 3, 1899, and worship services have been conducted in it continuously since then.
Architecturally West Point is a small gem (see No. 7). On the outside, notice particularly the well proportioned cathedral windows and the traditional entry tower with its handsomely plain double doorway ... tapered bell section with cartouche, louvered window and cut-shingle ornamentation, the square pyramidal tower, shingled and topped by a cross. Inside, notice the original pine flooring, "Pullman" style wood ceiling, the solid no-nonsense pews, and the hand-carved pulpit.
Curiously, if not significantly, this final botanical note: In the "lawn" of the churchyard, beyond the imported-shrub landscaping of the church itself, native bluestem and buffalo grass survive as a striking link between West Point with its pioneering heritage and the virgin prairie sod on which it was built.
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1983.
The National Register of Historic Places is the official list of the Nation’s historic places worthy of preservation. Authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America’s historic and archeological resources.