Hawthicket

The old Hawthicket Church sits along a lonely and dusty dirt road in rural Faulkner County. Its rusty metal door is locked tight, because this church no longer has a congregation. The old church rarely gets visitors, other than the cows that walk along the barbed-wire fence in the pasture lands next to the church.



The church was probably built around 1950. It replaced an older wooden buidling that had also served as a school. That church had been described as a "little white wooden church with a tin roof and wooden pews" that had stood for about 100 years. A member of the church thought that the old building probably wouldn't last much longer, and set about raising funds to build a new church. The new church, built with bricks and a shingle roof, would be a structure that she thought would stand forever.



But by the time she had managed to raise funds to build the church, most of the congregation had already transitioned to the nearby Bethlehem Cemetery. There is no record of there ever being a church service held here.



What was built as the "little brown church in the vale" became an orphan church. It has no owners or official caretakers. The people who own the cemetery are kind enough to mow the grass in front of the church, but they aren't able to do any maintenance on the building.



Several holes have appeared in the roof, and they grow after each and every storm.



The bricks of this old church have been resilient so far, but with such a large hole in the roof you have to wonder how much longer this church (which was built in order to "stand forever") will continue to hold out.