Callahan City Cemetery

Duane's take

The way I hear it, this comes straight from the official marker, so let me tell it true. Now, out here in Callahan County, there's a cemetery that's been keepin' its quiet watch longer than the county itself has had a name. The Callahan City Cemetery was established prior to the organization of Callahan County in 1877.

Think on that for a moment. The people were already burying their dead, already planting roots in this hard country, before anybody had gotten around to drawing the official lines on a map. That's the Texas frontier for you.

The paperwork comes after. The living, and the dying, come first. The men and women resting here were pioneers, and the marker doesn't let you forget what kind of world they stepped into.

This was the era of Indians and great early ranches. That's the world they knew, the world they worked in, and for some of them, the world that got the better of them. The cemetery has served people from communities whose names most folks wouldn't even recognize today.

Admiral. Callahan City. Other neighboring towns that have since faded back into the grass and the wind, the kind of places that exist now mostly in old letters and in the memories of headstones.

Bygone towns, the marker calls them, and that word carries its own kind of weight out here on the rolling West Texas plain. Those towns are gone. But this cemetery is still here.

Still holding the names.

What the marker says

Established prior to the organization of Callahan County in 1877. Burial place of many pioneers who came here during era of Indians and great early ranches. Served people of such bygone towns as Admiral, Callahan City, and other neighboring communities. (1967)