Colorado City Cemetery
Colorado City, Mitchell County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The Texas & Pacific Railroad came to Colorado (City) in April 1881, with the first lots laid out and sold shortly thereafter. The Local Independent Order of Odd Fellows (IOOF) Lodge No. 280 established a burial ground here for its members and their families, and the city designated adjacent land for a public cemetery. The earliest grave, that of Clint Mooney, dates to April 29, 1881. The IOOF later deeded their section to the city, who in 1928 built a formal entry and a rock wall along the south and east sides. In addition to the IOOF section, the cemetery includes the Lone Wolf, Colorado, and Park additions. The cemetery reflects Colorado City’s history, with more than 5,000 citizens buried here. Historic Texas Cemetery – 2016
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
When the Texas & Pacific Railroad reached Colorado City in April 1881, the new town platted its lots and, almost at once, its cemetery—the earliest grave, Clint Mooney's, dating to that same month. The local Odd Fellows lodge started a burial ground for members beside a public plot, later deeding it to the city, which built a formal entry and rock wall in 1928. With more than 5,000 people laid to rest across its several sections, the cemetery is a stone record of the railroad town's whole history.
Why it matters
It shows how the arrival of the railroad conjured a West Texas town into being—and how its cemetery still holds that town's collective memory.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Buffalo Trails
Colorado City, TX
These preserved tracks come from an ancient buffalo trail, one of the deep grooves that thundering herds pounded single-file into the West Texas ground as they moved between grazing grounds and watering holes. Migratory routes ran from the Rio Grande to Canada, and buffalo hunters like the Mooar brothers killed thousands here in the 1870s for hides, tongues, and meat. Native peoples had long followed these paths to the herds, and later explorers and railroad engineers built roads and rail lines along the very same routes.
Majors Home
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Built in 1883, this was one of Colorado City's first brick houses, raised by J. P. Hodgson and his wife — a daughter of Texas hero General Tom Green. It later sheltered a succession of West Texas notables, including millionaire rancher Winfield Scott and a promoter of the Texas & Pacific Railroad. Dr. Majors' family has owned it since 1902.
Texas & Pacific Railway
Colorado City, TX
When the Texas & Pacific Railway pushed through this valley in 1880, it turned a scatter of tents and dugouts into the "Cattle Capital of West Texas." Ranchers like Charles Goodnight and the great XIT had already trailed herds into a country where the last buffalo were vanishing and Texas Rangers guarded against raids. By April 1881 the railhead served some 350 residents with a county government, school, and newspaper, and soon shipped out thousands of cattle and freighted in the barbed wire and windmills that fenced the open range.
Sites of Texas & Pacific Railway Depots
Colorado City, TX
Rail service reached Colorado City on April 16, 1881, when a Texas & Pacific supply train arrived to build the town's first depot, and cattle pens soon rose on donated land nearby. The railroad and stockyards made the town the great shipping and supply hub for the vast ranching country of West Texas and eastern New Mexico — sending out cattle, hides, wool, salt, and buffalo bones — until passenger service finally ended in 1967.