Cementerio Loma De La Cruz (Hill of the Cross Cemetery)

🏛️The era

In the late nineteenth century, Del Rio was a young community on the Texas side of the Rio Grande, watered by local springs and closely tied to Mexico across the river. Many of its residents were of Mexican heritage. They were families whose language, faith, and customs set the town's character from its early days.

Those residents often lived in their own neighborhood, which the marker calls the Mexican Colony, and they did not always share equally in the community's institutions. Something as basic as a proper place to bury the dead could not be taken for granted. In a period of segregation and unequal treatment, that lack was a practical problem and also a painful one.

The border region was also shaped by the U.S. Army. Military posts and frontier patrols were part of daily life, and the army relied on scouts who knew the land. The people buried at Loma de la Cruz reflect all of these threads: border community, faith, and frontier service.

👥People & events

The central figure is Paula Losoya Taylor Rivers, who lived from about 1830 to 1902. The marker calls her an early land developer, an unusual role for a woman at the time. She saw that the Mexican Colony had no official cemetery, and in 1884 she donated four acres to create one.

The gift did more than set aside land. It let families bury their loved ones with dignity in ground that belonged to their community. A cross was placed at the top of the hill, and it gave the cemetery its name: Loma de la Cruz, the Hill of the Cross.

The people buried here include three former U.S. Army Indian Scouts and the Rev. Ramon V. Palomares, first pastor of Del Rio's Mexican American Methodist Church. Their graves show a community whose members served the country and built its own religious life.

The last burial was in 1933. Afterward a cemetery association restored the grounds and has continued to care for them, so the hilltop stays a place of memory instead of fading away.

🇺🇸Its place in the American story

Loma de la Cruz is part of a Mexican American history that goes back as far as any in the Southwest, even though it was often left out of the way that history was told. Border communities like Del Rio were built by Tejano and Mexican families, and cemeteries like this one are among the clearest records they left behind.

It is also a women's history site. At a time when women rarely held property or public influence, Paula Losoya Taylor Rivers used her land to meet a basic need of her community. Her gift is a reminder that community builders did not always hold office or appear in official records.

The scouts buried here link the site to the U.S. Army's frontier history in the Southwest, where scouts played an important and often overlooked part. Taken together, the cemetery shows how local, national, and borderland histories overlapped in one place.

🧭If you visit

Come quietly. This is a burial ground, and the people who restored and maintain it do so out of care. Walk respectfully, don't disturb the graves, and remember that many of the families here may still have descendants in Del Rio.

The hilltop setting is part of the story. Look for the rise where the cross gave the cemetery its name, and think about why that spot might have been chosen: a high, visible place of faith above a community that had been denied a place for its dead.

Del Rio is a good base for exploring the Texas borderlands, and this cemetery adds a personal dimension to the trip. Pair it with the town's other historic sites for a fuller picture of a border community that Mexican American families helped build.