DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, out here in Mills County, there's a patch of ground that's been holding onto the past longer than most folks realize. It's called Caradan Cemetery, and if you slow down long enough to look at it, you're looking at just about all that's left of a town that used to be something.
It goes back to after the Civil War, when families came and settled in this area. They called the place Lookout back then. Good name for a settlement — people always keeping an eye on what's coming next.
And what came next, eventually, was the business of building a real community. Schools, neighbors, roots. In 1889, a man named A.F.
Smith deeded two acres of land for a public school. Two acres. Doesn't sound like much, but in a young town, a schoolhouse is about the boldest statement of faith in the future you can make.
Then, later that same year, the future answered back in the hardest way it knows how. A baby boy named Arthur Nixon — infant son of W.J. Nixon and N.E.
Nixon — died. And they buried little Arthur right there on the school land. That's the kind of grief that becomes part of a place.
It sinks in and stays. The school carried on, until it didn't. Sometime in the early 1900s, it burned.
And when they rebuilt it, they put it somewhere else. That left those two acres behind — the two acres A.F. Smith had given, the same ground where Arthur Nixon lay.
So the land became what it perhaps already was: a cemetery. More than a hundred and fifty graves are there now. Veterans of the Civil War, World War I, World War II — men who went out into the wider world and came back to rest in Mills County.
Generations of families who called Caradan home. Because that's what it became — Caradan. A town that once thrived, by the marker's own account.
A place with enough life in it to bury its dead and mean something by it. Most of that town is gone now. The cemetery is one of the few physical remnants still standing — still serving the community, the marker says.
And that's the quiet miracle of it. The school burned. The town faded.
But those two acres A.F. Smith signed over in 1889 are still doing their work. Some things, once given, just don't let go.
What the marker says
After the Civil War families settled in this area, originally called Lookout. A.F. Smith deeded two acres of land in 1889 for a public school. Arthur Nixon, the infant son of W.J. Nixon and N.E. Nixon, died later that year and was buried on school land. When the school burned in the early 1900s, it was rebuilt in another location, leaving two acres for the cemetery. Among the more than 150 graves here are veterans of the Civil War, World War I, and World War II. The cemetery is one of the few physical remnants of the once thriving town of Caradan and still serves the community. (1996)