Jericho Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll pass it along to you straight. About a mile west of here, in Donley County, the land started filling up with settlers in the late nineteenth century. Folks were putting down roots before there was even a town to speak of.

Then, around 1902, Jericho came into being as a station on the Chicago, Rock Island and Gulf rail line, and it had itself a name and a place on the map. But the ground had already been receiving the dead for years before that train ever whistled through. Early community burials took place in a pasture near this very site, and over time, that graveyard was set aside in the county deed records, made official, given its permanence.

The first documented burial is that of Mattie Ray, born in 1850, gone by 1895. The second is a child. Seven months old.

Garil Prest Schaffer, who died in 1897. You sit with that a moment. Seven months.

The marker doesn't say more, and it doesn't need to. The Jericho Cemetery went on to hold others, many others. Victims of smallpox epidemics.

Victims of influenza. Military veterans. The pioneers who shaped this corner of Donley County with their own hands and then gave it something that can't be undone: their bones in its soil.

That pasture became a record. Of arrivals and departures, of epidemics that didn't spare anyone, of a community that kept showing up to bury its own long before the railroad gave them a reason to stay.

What the marker says

(1 mile west) Settlement of this area of Donley County began in the late 19th century, before the town of Jericho was founded as a station on the Chicago, Rock Island and Gulf rail line about 1902. Early community burials took place in the pasture near this site, and the graveyard eventually was set aside in the county deed records. The first documented burial is that of Mattie Ray (1850-1895), and the second is that of seven-month-old Garil Prest Schaffer, who died in 1897. Others buried in the Jericho Cemetery include victims of smallpox and influenza epidemics, military veterans and area pioneers. (2001)