Gomez Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll carry it the rest of the way for you. Way out here in Terry County, before Brownfield had a name anybody knew, before there was much of anything at all, there was Gomez. First settlement in the whole county, and it put down roots in 1902, about half a mile west of where you're standing right now.

Now, a settlement that age, in country this unforgiving, it needed a few things to call itself real: a school, a post office, and a place to lay its dead to rest. Gomez had all three. The cemetery we're talkin' about got its start right along with that town, in 1902, out on the flat western edge of Texas where the wind doesn't apologize for anything.

Four acres of ground. Not a lot, but enough to hold the earliest souls who tried their luck out here. In 1906, a pioneer settler by the name of H.

F. Adams deeded that original four-acre tract to the Gomez School trustees, making it official, tying the land of the living to the land of the dead in the way frontier towns always did. Some of those earliest settlers, the ones who came first and stayed permanently, they're still here.

But here's the part that hits a little different. In 1918, many of the graves were moved. Moved to Brownfield, the town that had grown up and eventually overshadowed Gomez itself.

Think about that for a moment. The town shifted, and in a way, the dead had to follow. What you're visiting now is what remained, a quiet four acres carrying the weight of being first, out here where Terry County began.

What the marker says

Established in 1902 in Gomez (then 0.5 mi. W of here), first settlement in Terry County. Original 4-acre tract was deeded to Gomez School trustees in 1906 by pioneer settler H. F. Adams. Some of earliest settlers are buried here. Many graves were moved to Brownfield in 1918. (1970)