Cataline Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Way out in Hemphill County, there's a little hill with a long view down to the Washita River valley. Quiet place now.

But the story of how it became a cemetery — well, that starts before Hemphill County even had a name on a map. The Cataline community got there first. Families were already putting down roots, already building something out of nothing in that remote stretch of Texas, before the county itself was organized.

They didn't wait on government to tell them what they needed. In 1885 they stood up the county's first school. By 1887 they had a church.

And in February of 1887 — five months before Hemphill County even officially organized — Cataline had its own post office. Five months. The community was already a going concern while the county was still just paperwork.

Then came March of 1896. An infant named Emma Turner died. And someone — her family, her neighbors, people who understood grief the way you only do when you're far from everywhere — looked out and chose that small hill with its wide view toward the Washita River valley.

That's where they laid her down. Now, grief has a way of clarifying what a community needs. By July of 1896, the Methodist Episcopal Church had bought three acres from the State of Texas, making it official: Cataline had a burial ground.

What that ground holds is not easy to sit with. The marker is plain about it. Nine children under the age of one are buried there.

Nine. In a remote community, that number tells you everything about the hardships those families faced — the distances from help, the fragility of early life on that rolling edge of the Texas Panhandle. The cemetery still stands today, granite and iron gravestones rising up behind interior fencing, quiet on that hill above the river valley.

The school is gone. The church is gone. The post office, the community itself — gone.

Cataline exists now only in that three-acre plot. It is, the marker says, the last historic vestige of Cataline. Sometimes a cemetery isn't just where a community buries its dead.

Sometimes it's the only proof left that the community ever lived at all.

What the marker says

The Cataline community predates Hemphill County’s organization. Families moving to this area established the county’s first school (1885) and church (1887). A post office opened in Feb. 1887, five months before the county organized. In March 1896, infant Emma Turner died, and a small hill with a view to the Washita River valley was chosen for her burial. The Methodist Episcopal Church bought three acres from the State of Texas to officially establish the community burial ground in July 1896. The site attests to hardships in a remote community; burials here include nine children under age one. The cemetery, which features granite and iron gravestones and interior fencing, remains as the last historic vestige of Cataline. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2009