Dothan Cemetery
Cicso, Eastland County, Texas
Marker Inscription
THE TEXAS AND PACIFIC RAILWAY BUILT THE DELMAR DEPOT NEAR HERE IN 1880 BEFORE RAIL ACTIVITY SHIFTED TO RED GAP (LATER CISCO). A NEW COMMUNITY NAMED DOTHAN FORMED AND GAINED A POST OFFICE IN 1902. JIM AND MANIRVAL (SHORT) DUNAWAY, WHO SETTLED HERE IN 1886, DONATED LAND FOR A COMMUNITY CEMETERY. THE FIRST BURIAL WAS THEIR GREAT-GRANDSON, CARROLL LEO DUNAWAY, IN 1905. DOTHAN INCLUDED A SCHOOL AND STORES AND BY 1915 REPORTED A POPULATION OF FIFTY. THE SCHOOL CLOSED IN 1940. FAMILY AND FRIENDS HAVE ALWAYS MAINTAINED THE CEMETERY, WHICH FEATURES GRANITE, LIMESTONE AND FIELDSTONE GRAVE MARKERS, A WIRE PERIMETER FENCE, AND AT LEAST 22 VETERANS’ GRAVES. THE DOTHAN CEMETERY ASSOCIATION FORMED IN 1989 TO PRESERVE THIS HISTORIC VESTIGE OF A RURAL COMMUNITY.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The Texas and Pacific Railway built the Delmar Depot near here in 1880 before rail activity shifted toward what became Cisco. A community called Dothan grew up, gaining a post office in 1902, and settlers Jim and Manirval Dunaway donated land for a cemetery whose first burial, in 1905, was their own great-grandson. Dothan supported a school and stores and reported fifty residents by 1915, but the school closed in 1940. Families have kept up the cemetery, with its granite, limestone, and fieldstone markers and at least twenty-two veterans' graves.
Why it matters
Dothan Cemetery is a well-tended vestige of a railroad-born prairie community, showing how the coming — and going — of the rails made and unmade small Texas towns.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
The land around Cisco, in Eastland County, was shaped by the coming of the railroad. When the Texas and Pacific Railway pushed through this country in 1880 and built the Delmar Depot nearby, it set in motion the familiar drama of the rail frontier: communities forming, shifting, and re-forming around wherever the tracks and their traffic settled. Rail activity later moved toward a place called Red Gap, which would eventually become Cisco.
Out of that churn a new community named Dothan took shape, and it reached a milestone that every frontier settlement coveted — a post office of its own, granted in 1902. A post office meant a place had arrived: it had a name on the map and a reason for the mail to stop.
This was prairie farming country in the Progressive era, when small communities across Texas were organizing schools, opening stores, and knitting themselves together. Dothan followed that pattern, growing into a modest but real town with the institutions that ordinary rural life required.
People & events
The heart of Dothan's story is the Dunaway family. Jim and Manirval Dunaway — she went by the nickname Short — settled here in 1886 and donated the land for a community cemetery. By the time the burial ground was needed, they were an established, elder generation of the settlement, and the first person laid to rest there, in 1905, was their own great-grandson, Carroll Leo Dunaway.
Around that first grave the community grew and then, in time, receded. Dothan gained a school and stores, and by 1915 it reported a population of about fifty souls — small, but a functioning town. The school, so often the last institution to close in a fading community, held on until 1940.
When the town itself slipped away, the families did not let the cemetery go with it. They kept it up, generation after generation, and in 1989 formed the Dothan Cemetery Association to make that care lasting. Today the grounds hold granite, limestone, and fieldstone markers behind a simple wire fence, and at least twenty-two graves belong to veterans.
Its place in the American story
Dothan Cemetery is a textbook example of a truth that shaped the American map: the railroad made and unmade towns. A depot could conjure a community into being, and a shift of the tracks a few miles away could just as easily doom it. Across the West and South, the ghost towns that dot the countryside are monuments to that power.
What sets a place like Dothan apart is not that it disappeared — that was common — but that it is still tended. The cemetery, with its humble mix of granite, limestone, and rough fieldstone markers, is a working memorial kept alive by descendants who refuse to let the community be forgotten.
The veterans' graves add another layer of national meaning. In a town that never numbered more than a few dozen people, more than twenty men left to serve their country. That is a reminder of how deeply the nation's wars reached into even its smallest and most out-of-the-way communities.
If you visit
This is a place that rewards a traveler willing to leave the main road. Set on the open Eastland County prairie, the cemetery is quiet and unpolished, and that is exactly its charm — a hand-kept plot of ground rather than a manicured park.
Look closely at the grave markers, because their materials tell a story of their own. The mix of polished granite, cut limestone, and plain fieldstone reflects what families could manage in different years, and the simple wire fence around the grounds speaks to the modest, practical care that has always defined this place. Seek out the veterans' markers scattered among the family plots.
If you are tracing the ghost towns and railroad history of this region, Dothan makes a fitting stop. There is nothing flashy here — no town left to see — only a well-tended cemetery and the strong sense of a community that has outlasted its own disappearance through the loyalty of the people who still come to care for it.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Jim Dunaway
- · Manirval Dunaway
- · Carroll Leo Dunaway
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Military Telegraph Line
Baird vicinity, TX
In the mid-1870s the U.S. Army strung a telegraph line across this stretch of West Texas to link Fort Griffin and Fort Concho, part of a wider web wiring the frontier forts together. The line let commanders coordinate patrols and supply across vast, thinly settled distances during the last decades of the Indian wars on the Southern Plains.
Old Fort Phantom Hill Corn Road
Clyde, TX
Established in 1851 to move supplies between Austin and the remote outpost of Fort Phantom Hill, this road cut diagonally across the county from northwest to southeast. Though regular troops abandoned the fort in 1854 and the supply line closed with them, the route lived on, traveled by emigrants, soldiers, surveyors, and others pushing into the West Texas frontier.
Scranton Cemetery
Cisco, TX
Settled in the 1870s, Scranton grew into a full community with a post office, stores, cotton gin, blacksmith, school, and academy. In 1896 Joseph Jackson Ray and his wife Sarah donated land for a Baptist church and graveyard, though the first burial — an infant of the Sprawls family — had already taken place that July. A cemetery association formed in 1968, and the nearby community center still hosts services and an annual homecoming. Veterans from the Civil War onward lie here alongside the settlement's pioneers, educators, and officials.
Oakwood Cemetery
Cisco, TX
Oakwood Cemetery in Cisco began by accident in 1883, when a family traveling to Fort Worth for lumber buried a stillborn son beneath an oak in their pasture. A cemetery association organized in 1899 fenced and beautified the grounds, and during the Depression the Works Progress Administration raised a 2,517-foot rock wall and a signature stone archway. Today more than 7,000 graves rest here, including over 600 veterans spanning the Civil War through Vietnam.