What a strange story about Wichita Falls history I discovered today.

Time for another random Wichita Falls story from me. I love looking up weird Wichita Falls history. Without a doubt the strangest one is about a killer elephant allegedly being buried somewhere in our city. Check that one out here. Today though, something a little more lighthearted about a mysterious postcard sent to our city.

'The City That Faith Built'

If someone can correct me on this, but I believe that nickname came from an advertisement in the Dallas Morning News back in 1921. It was trying to attract people to Wichita Falls. It also said our city is “Where Today’s Dream Is Tomorrow’s Achievement!”, which sounds like something Walt Disney would say.

The City that Faith Built is what Wichita Falls came to be known as. Throughout our history, it has been used several times. Probably most famously by President Franklin Roosevelt.

My old friend, Congressman McFarlane, has told me much about the city that “faith built” and that is the finest name that could be given any city of the nation.

When the freaking President of the country says you have the finest name of any city in the nation, that's bragging rights for sure. Turns out this nickname was so popular back in the day. Someone wanted to see if you could mail a postcard using it.

Postcard with, 'The City That Faith Built'

The Wichita Daily Times back in the day had the story. John Donald, assistant city engineer was on vacation in Utah back in the day and wanted to try an experiment. Could he mail a letter to 'The City that Faith Built' and it arrive in Wichita Falls, Texas? So he tried it out with the full address and just changed the city to our nickname.

According to the article, it arrived at the address in the normal amount of time for the 1920's postal service. I know what some people are thinking, wouldn't the zip code give away the city location? Zip codes were not invented until 1963, so back in the day you just went off of city and state.

I assume this letter was just sent to Texas and some poor postal worker had to figure out where 'The City That Faith Built' was. Maybe, this nickname was so popular in the 1920's that everyone knew where that was and this really didn't take that long for someone to figure out.

Just a quick little Wichita Falls fun fact that you may not know. Our Wichita Falls nickname was so popular, you used to be able to send mail with it.