Llano Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Out here on the Panhandle, where the wind comes at you from every direction and the land stretches out flat as a promise, there's a place called Llano Cemetery, and its story starts before it was even a cemetery. The land itself came from T.

B. and Hattie M. Clisbee, who gave it in 1891. But here's the thing, the ground had already been receiving the dead before that gift was ever made.

Burials had taken place before the Clisbees ever signed anything over. So the cemetery came to the land, you might say, before the land officially came to the cemetery. The earliest known burial dates to 1888.

Her name was Lillian Morrow. Local legend says she was a child, laid to rest here by her family as they traveled westward. A family moving toward something, stopping to leave someone behind.

The marker doesn't say where they were headed, and it doesn't say whether they ever got there. It just says she is here, the first known soul in this ground, in 1888. The years kept passing.

A cemetery association formed around 1901, and by 1921 it was formally chartered. That's twenty years of tending and organizing before anyone made it official, which tells you something about the patience of Panhandle people. Llano Cemetery grew into a regional burial ground for folks all across the Panhandle, which is no small territory.

And then in 1929, with widespread community support, something remarkable went up: a mausoleum called The Llano Pancheon. The whole community got behind it. That's the kind of thing that tells you a place has stopped being just a plot of ground and become something that belongs to everyone.

It started with a child and a westward journey that paused here in 1888. It's been keeping the Panhandle's memory ever since.

What the marker says

Land for this cemetery was given by T. B. and Hattie M. Clisbee in 1891, although a number of burials had already taken place by that time. The earliest known burial, that of Lillian Morrow, occurred in 1888. According to local legend, she was a child interred here by her westward-traveling family. A cemetery association, which was formed about 1901, was chartered in 1921. Llano Cemetery has served as a regional burial ground for Panhandle residents. A mausoleum, The Llano Pancheon, was built in 1929 with widespread community support. (1987)