DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. This is Duane, and this one comes from Val Verde County — the story of Cementerio Loma De La Cruz, the Hill of the Cross Cemetery. Now settle in, because this story starts with one woman who looked around Del Rio and saw something that wasn't there — and decided to fix it.
Paula Losoya Taylor Rivers. Born around 1830, passed in 1902. The marker calls her an early land developer, and that title alone tells you she was a woman who understood what land meant, what it was worth, and — here's the part that matters — what it was for.
She looked at Del Rio's Mexican Colony and recognized a hard truth: the people there had no official cemetery in which to bury their dead. No consecrated ground. No designated place to lay their loved ones down proper.
Now you might think that kind of problem just quietly persists, the way so many problems do. But Paula Rivers wasn't built for quiet persistence. In 1884, she donated four acres — just gave them — to be designated as a cemetery.
Four acres of Texas earth, set aside so that the dead could finally rest in a place of their own. And someone, at some point, placed a cross at the top of a hill overlooking that ground. That cross gave the cemetery its name.
Loma de la Cruz. Hill of the Cross. Resting in that ground are people whose stories reach in every direction.
Three former United States Army Indian Scouts are buried there — men who served under that flag and found their final rest in this donated earth. And there's the Reverend Ramon V. Palomares, the first pastor of Del Rio's Mexican American Methodist Church — the first.
A man who held that congregation together from the very beginning, buried now among his community. The last burial at Loma de la Cruz took place in 1933. After that, the ground went quiet.
But quiet doesn't mean forgotten. A cemetery association took it upon themselves to restore the graveyard and now maintains it — keeping faith with Paula Rivers and every soul she made room for. Four acres.
A cross on a hill. And a woman who understood that a community without a place to honor its dead isn't whole. That's the Hill of the Cross.
What the marker says
Early land developer Paula Losoya Taylor Rivers (ca. 1830-1902) realized that the people of Del Rio's Mexican Colony had no official cemetery in which to bury their dead. She donated four acres to be designated as a cemetery in 1884. Also buried here are three former U. S. Army Indian Scouts and the Rev. Ramon V. Palomares, first pastor of Del Rio's Mexican American Methodist Church. A cross placed at the top of a hill gave the cemetery its name. The last burial here took place in 1933. A cemetery association restored and maintains the graveyard. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986.