On a 50-acre site donated in 1868 by John H. and Steven Dunn for church and school purposes, this church stood in a large Irish and Czech Catholic area near the Post Road Trading Station of Bovine. It served as the church of St. Joseph's Parish from 1876 to 1912. The parish was founded in the 1860s by Father John Anthony Forest (1838-1911), who later became the third bishop of the Diocese of San Antonio from 1895 to 1911. Parishoners built the church from 1869 to 1876 using stone from Muldoon, East Texas mill pine, and hand-hewn logs. Blacksmiths made nails and hinges on the site, and the floor was of hard-packed, mortared clay. The last Mass here was said on Aug. 26, 1912, and the church burned in 1932.