Palacios United Methodist Church has kept the lights on for the shrimping fleet, the packing houses, and everybody who works the bay since 1912. No pretense. No dress code. Just a pew and a bay breeze.
Most of our families make their living off Tres Palacios Bay or East Matagorda Bay — shrimping, crabbing, running bait camps, working the docks and the packing sheds. Sunday mornings, you’ll see boots and Sunday clothes in the same pew, sometimes on the same person.
We were chartered in 1912 by shrimpers’ and ranchers’ families who wanted a Methodist church close enough to walk to after coming off the water. That’s still who we are: close enough to walk to, and glad to have you, salt on your boots or not.
Jeans, work shirts, and ball caps sit next to Sunday best every week. Nobody’s counting. If you just got off a shrimp run, you’re not underdressed — you’re right on time.
Singing from the hymnal, a plain sermon, and communion the first Sunday of the month. Stick around after — the coffee pot in Fellowship Hall runs the whole morning.
Gravel lot behind the sanctuary, shaded by the live oaks. If it’s full on a Sunday, there’s street parking all along Bay Boulevard — a two-minute walk.
The posts under our fellowship hall still carry the pencil marks from every storm that’s tried to take Palacios off the map. We kept them. Here’s what they say.