Crown Hill Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Crown Hill Cemetery, Harris County, Texas. Settle in.

This one goes back to the beginning of a town. Permanent settlement of this area began about 1891. Two years later, lot sales in the new town of Pasadena got underway, and the town itself was officially platted three years after that.

A community was taking shape, putting down roots, and like any community that means to last, it eventually had to reckon with its dead. The first recorded burials in this vicinity occurred about 1894, though the exact locations of those graves are unknown today. Lost to time, or lost to ground.

Either way, they came first. Then in 1906, on a knoll overlooking Vince's Bayou and Buffalo Bayou, the town established its one and only community burial ground. Originally called Pasadena Cemetery, it sat up on that rise like it was keeping watch over the water.

The first person buried there was E. P. Pomeroy, who died on October 24th, 1906.

First in a place nobody wants to be first. In the years that followed, the cemetery received Pasadena's early settlers, its community leaders, and veterans. Veterans of the Civil War, the Spanish American War, World War I, and World War II.

Four wars. Generations of men and women who answered when called. Sometime after World War I, the cemetery acquired a new name.

Crown Hill. The marker says possibly as a result of its proximity to the Crown Central Refinery. Possibly.

That's the kind of word that keeps a story honest. Then there's another layer to this place. Beginning in the 1920s, it was also referred to as the Mexican Cemetery, because of the numbers of Mexican-American farmers who were interred here.

Farmers working this land, raising families here, and finding their final rest here alongside everyone else. Today, Crown Hill Cemetery is surrounded by 20th-century industrial development on all sides. The refineries moved in.

The industry moved in. And the cemetery stayed. That's the thing about a well-kept burial ground sitting on a knoll above two bayous.

It has a way of outlasting what surrounds it. A link, the marker calls it, to the area's pioneer heritage. I'd say that's about right.

What the marker says

Permanent settlement of this area began about 1891. Lot sales in the new town of Pasadena began in 1893, and the town was officially platted three years later. The first recorded burials in this vicinity occurred about 1894, although the exact locations of the graves are unknown. This graveyard, originally known as Pasadena Cemetery and the town's only community burial ground, was established in 1906 on a knoll overlooking Vince's Bayou and Buffalo Bayou. The first person buried here was E. P. Pomeroy, who died on October 24, 1906. Those interred here include many of Pasadena's early settlers and community leaders, and veterans of the Civil War, the Spanish American War, World War I, and World War II. The graveyard became known as Crown Hill Cemetery following World War I, possibly as a result of its proximity to the Crown Central Refinery. It has also been referred to as the Mexican Cemetery due to the numbers of Mexican-American farmers who were interred here beginning in the 1920s. Although surrounded by 20th-century industrial development, this cemetery survives as a link to the area's pioneer heritage.