DUANE
Duane's take
The official marker tells it this way, and I'm just here to make sure you hear it right. Somewhere along this stretch of Atascosa County, you're standing near the ghost of a town that had everything — and then, quietly, lost it all. The name is Amphion, and the story starts before the Civil War.
Back in 1857, what's believed to have been Atascosa County's very first courthouse was constructed near this very site, at the county seat of Navatasco. A courthouse meant civilization. It meant permanence.
It meant people were planning to stay. And stay they did. Amphion grew up within the 17,000-acre ranch of Jose Antonio Navarro — a prominent local rancher and, worth noting, a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence.
The town is thought to have been named after a figure in Greek mythology, which tells you something about the ambitions of the people who put it on the map. They weren't thinking small. At its peak, Amphion was a thriving community.
We're talking several general stores, a hotel, a post office, a blacksmith shop, a cotton gin, a tannery, churches, fraternal lodges, and a school. That is not a settlement. That is a town with its boots on.
Now, the cemetery was established about 1870, on land donated by Roy Jenkins and Frank Lozano. The earliest recorded gravesite is that of Laura Underwood, who died in 1891. But there is a gravestone with the year 1800 inscribed on its surface — and local tradition claims it marks the grave of a young boy killed by Indians.
The marker doesn't push past that. Sometimes a stone and a story are all that's left to carry a memory. The cemetery also holds the graves of at least two veterans of the American Civil War.
Then came the railroads. When rail lines were built through Atascosa County — in 1907, and again in 1927 — they went along routes that bypassed Amphion entirely. Business activity declined.
The community eventually dissolved. And that, as they say, was that. A town with a courthouse and a cotton gin and a hotel and a name pulled from Greek mythology — gone.
Virtually all that remains of the former town of Amphion is this cemetery. The living moved on. The dead stayed.
And the dead are the ones who kept the address.
What the marker says
Amphion traces its beginning to the establishment of Atascosa County's first courthouse which is believed to have been constructed near this site at the county seat of Navatasco in 1857. Amphion, thought to have been named after a figure in Greek mythology, was located within the 17,000-acre ranch of Jose Antonio Navarro, a prominent local rancher and signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence. Amphion was at one time a thriving community with several general stores, a hotel, post office, blacksmith shop, cotton gin, tannery, churches, fraternal lodges and a school. Amphion Cemetery was established about 1870 at this site on land donated by Roy Jenkins and Frank Lozano. Although the earliest recorded gravesite is that of Laura Underwood (d.1891) there is a gravestone with the year 1800 inscribed on its surface that local tradition claims marks the grave of a young boy killed by indians. This cemetery contains the graves of at least two veterans of the American Civil War. When railroad lines were built through Atascosa County in 1907 and 1927 along routes that bypassed Amphion, business activity declined and the community eventually dissolved. Virtually all that remains of the former town of Amphion is this cemetery. (1992)