DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and here's how I'm going to tell it to you. There's a cemetery sitting out on the Lamb County plain, and if you didn't know to look for it, you'd drive right past and never think twice. But that ground has a story, and it goes back further than the town that used to surround it.
The George C. Wright Land Company opened this area for settlement in 1908. New country, fresh start, all the promise that comes with both.
The community that took root here was called Springdale, and it took its name from the nearby Springlake Ranch. Now, a community needs a lot of things to get going — people, purpose, a place to buy supplies. But sooner or later, every community needs something else too.
In 1909, that first burial took place. Before a hotel. Before the schoolhouse filled up with children.
The ground was already receiving the dead. A man named D. B.
Shiftlet donated the first two acres for the cemetery, and folks began building something permanent in a place that turned out to be less permanent than anyone planned. Over the years, three hundred and fifty-six known graves were laid in that soil. Five of them are unmarked — five souls whose names the ground is keeping to itself.
Now here's where the story takes its turn. In 1935, the community of Springlake was relocated. Four and three-quarter miles southeast, the town picked itself up and moved on.
The hotel went. The supply store went. The school and the post office — gone, every bit of it, carried off to the new location down the road.
Every bit of it except one. The cemetery stayed. It couldn't very well do otherwise.
And so today, out at that original site, the marker and the graves are all that's left of where Springlake used to stand. Three hundred and fifty-six known souls, five unnamed among them, holding down the spot where the whole thing started. Some things, once planted, just don't move.
What the marker says
This burial ground served the original residents of Springdale community. The area was opened for settlement in 1908 by the George C. Wright Land Company. It was named for the nearby Springlake Ranch. D. B. Shiftlet donated the first two acres for the cemetery. The first burial took place in 1909. Of the 356 known graves, five are unmarked. The community of Springlake was relocated in 1935, 4.75 miles southeast. The town once had a hotel, supply store, school and post office, but only the cemetery remains at the original site. (1980)