Buffalo Gap Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about this place. Now, when you roll into Buffalo Gap, Taylor County, you might not think much about the ground beneath your boots. But some ground has more stories in it than others, and the Buffalo Gap Cemetery, friend, that is exactly that kind of ground.

Ten acres of it. This is the oldest public cemetery in all of Taylor County, and here is the thing that gets me every time I think about it: people were being laid to rest here before anyone even bothered to put up a headstone. The earliest known headstones go back to about 1877, and the marker is careful to say about 1877, because the burying had already been going on before that.

Before the stone. Before the name carved in granite. Just the earth, and the memory of neighbors who knew who was there.

In the older section of that ten-acre plot, there are a hundred and forty-six graves. Civil War veterans. Pioneer citizens of Taylor County.

People who came out to this part of Texas when coming out to this part of Texas was not a casual decision. They built something here, and eventually they were put in the ground here, and the ground kept the count even when the stones did not. And here is the part that lands quiet but lands hard: the tract is still in use.

That cemetery opened before the headstones did, kept going through the generations, and it has not stopped yet. Some places hold the past. Buffalo Gap Cemetery holds it, and then just keeps on going.

What the marker says

Oldest public cemetery in Taylor County; used by residents of Buffalo Gap even before the earliest known headstones were erected, about 1877. In the older section of the ten-acre plot are 146 graves, many of Civil War veterans and pioneer citizens of Taylor County. Tract is still in use. (1968)