DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about Milo Cemetery out in Briscoe County. Now picture this: the high plains of Texas, that wide open stretch of prairie caught between two canyons — Palo Duro on one side, Tule on the other. Sometime in the late 19th century, people started putting down roots right there in that in-between place.
They called it Milo, named for the crop that grew so well in that country. And for a spell, it was a real honest-to-goodness community — a store, a post office, a school, and families living in dugouts and homes scattered across the prairie in the 1890s. Now here's where the story takes a turn.
In 1892, a man named John Alexander Cope passed away. His family, grieving as families do, made a decision that would outlast nearly everything else about Milo. They donated two acres of that prairie ground to serve as a community cemetery.
Two acres. That's what they gave. The graves out there are laid out the old traditional way — oriented east to west, set among natural grasses that the wind still moves through just like it always has.
Two of the early graves are fenced with ornamental iron. The Cope family plot sits enclosed in a concrete curb. And the markers themselves tell you something about the people who settled that ground — granite, marble, sandstone, cement.
Pioneers. Lodge members. And among them, two veterans of the Civil War, resting on the Texas plains far from wherever their war was fought.
Here's the thing that'll stay with you. All of it — the store, the post office, the school, the homes, every last piece of that community — is gone now. Every bit of it.
The Milo Cemetery is the only thing left to tell you that any of it was ever there. Two acres, donated in grief, and that turns out to be the only piece of Milo that survived.
What the marker says
The Milo community began in the late 19th century on the prairie between Palo Duro and Tule canyons. Named for the favored area crop, the settlement had a store, post office, school, and scattered family dugouts and homes in the 1890s. When John Alexander Cope died in 1892, his family donated two acres for a community cemetery. The general landscape is traditional, with all graves oriented east-west among natural grasses. Two early graves are fenced with ornamental iron, and a concrete curb encloses the Cope family plot. Granite, marble, sandstone and cement markers honor pioneers and later citizens, including two Civil War veterans and fraternal lodge members. Today the Milo Cemetery is the only remaining evidence of this historic site. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2012