Fairmont Cemetery
Follett, Lipscomb County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This burial ground serves citizens near the northern tip of Texas at a site closer to capitals of six other states than it is to Austin. In 1901, area settlers established Ivanhoe, OK., eight miles to the north. That town moved two miles in 1909 to a site on the Beaver Valley and Northwestern Railway, changing its name to South Ivanhoe and leaving behind only the Methodist church building. Eight years later, citizens moved again, this time across the state line to a spot on the North Texas and Santa Fe Railway built from Shattuck, OK. to Spearman, TX. Beginning in December 1917, all the buildings of South Ivanhoe, including a hotel and bank, were put on skids and dragged to the new townsite. The settlement, named for railroad engineer Horace Follett, got its post office in 1918. Dr. Charles and Ora White owned land in South Ivanhoe and at this site, deeding land for Fairmont Cemetery in 1910, even before the establishment of Follett. The first burial was the reinterment of Myra Jones, a mother of six, who was killed by lightning in 1904 and originally buried at the Gigger Ranch. Her widowed husband, Michael "Uncle Mac" Jones, was the cemetery's first caretaker. In the 1920s, Frederick Harhausen and his two sons hauled more than 200 cedar trees from near Vici, OK. (40 mi. SE), planting them on the perimeter and in a circle in the center of the cemetery. The outlining trees remain among the cemetery's more distinctive landscape features. Those buried here include the children of Mexican railroad workers who died during the influenza epidemic of 1918. More than one hundred military veterans, three of whom were killed in action in World War II, are also interred here. The Fairmont Cemetery Association, founded in 1909, cares for the cemetery. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2006
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
At the far northern tip of Texas—closer to six other state capitals than to Austin—Fairmont Cemetery outlasted the towns that made it. Settlers founded Ivanhoe in Oklahoma in 1901, moved it to the railroad as South Ivanhoe, then in 1917 dragged its buildings on skids across the state line to a new Santa Fe stop named Follett. The cemetery, deeded in 1910, holds its first burial the reinterred body of a mother of six killed by lightning, alongside the children of Mexican railroad workers lost to the 1918 influenza epidemic and more than a hundred military veterans.
Why it matters
Fairmont preserves the human cost of the great plains land rush—towns built on wheels, immigrant labor, epidemic disease—at the very edge of Texas.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
At the very northern tip of Texas, where the state's boundary meets Oklahoma, the land is so far from the rest of Texas that it sits closer to the capitals of six other states than to Austin. This is deep plains country, and in the first years of the twentieth century it was still being settled by homesteaders chasing farmland and, above all, chasing the railroads that would make that farmland worth working.
Here, more than almost anywhere, towns were provisional things. A settlement's location was a bet on where the tracks would run, and when the bet went wrong, the answer was not to rebuild but to move — sometimes across county lines, sometimes across the state line itself. Whole communities picked up and relocated more than once in a single generation.
Against this backdrop of towns on the move, a cemetery became one of the few genuinely permanent things a community could create — a fixed point in a landscape where even the buildings were temporary.
People & events
The human story here begins with restless towns and steady graves. Area settlers founded Ivanhoe, Oklahoma, in 1901, eight miles north; in 1909 the town moved two miles to sit on the Beaver Valley and Northwestern Railway and renamed itself South Ivanhoe. Eight years after that, it moved yet again — this time across the state line into Texas, onto the North Texas and Santa Fe Railway built from Shattuck, Oklahoma, to Spearman. Beginning in December 1917, every building of South Ivanhoe, hotel and bank included, was put on skids and dragged to the new townsite, which was named Follett for a railroad engineer and got its post office in 1918.
The cemetery, though, came before the town it now serves. Dr. Charles and Ora White, who owned land at this site, deeded the ground for Fairmont Cemetery in 1910 — years before Follett existed. Its first burial was a reinterment that carries the whole weight of frontier hardship: Myra Jones, a mother of six, had been killed by lightning in 1904 and first buried at the Gigger Ranch; when the cemetery opened, she was brought here. Her widowed husband, Michael "Uncle Mac" Jones, became the cemetery's first caretaker, tending the ground where his wife lay.
The grounds themselves bear the mark of another family's labor. In the 1920s, Frederick Harhausen and his two sons hauled more than two hundred cedar trees some forty miles from near Vici, Oklahoma, planting them around the perimeter and in a circle at the center. Those outlining trees still stand as one of the cemetery's most distinctive features — a living record of the effort it took to make anything grow, or endure, on these plains.
Its place in the American story
Fairmont gathers into one place several of the great forces that shaped the settling of the American plains. There is the land rush and the railroad, which made towns disposable and sent whole communities sliding across the map on skids. There is the immigrant labor that built those railroads: among the graves are the children of Mexican railroad workers who died in the influenza epidemic of 1918.
That epidemic is itself a piece of national history written small here. The 1918 influenza swept the entire country and the world, and its arrival in a brand-new railroad town at the edge of Texas — carried along the same lines that brought the settlers — shows how completely even the remotest places were bound into national and global events.
And there is military service. More than a hundred veterans rest at Fairmont, three of them killed in action in World War II. A burial ground that opened before its own town existed became, over the decades, a place where the nation's wars and the community's founding families lie side by side.
If you visit
Start with the geography, because it genuinely reorders your sense of Texas: you are standing at a spot nearer to six other state capitals than to your own. That fact alone changes how the wide, quiet horizon feels.
Look for the cedars. The ring of trees at the center and the line of them around the edges were hauled in by hand from dozens of miles away, and they are the clearest surviving evidence of how much deliberate effort it took to shape this ground. Walk the older sections and you'll find the reach of the place's history — a mother reinterred here as its very first burial, the graves of railroad workers' children lost to the 1918 epidemic, and rows of veterans' markers.
For a traveler tracing the vanished towns of the far northern Panhandle, Fairmont is the anchor that outlasted them all. The settlements moved and moved again and finally became Follett; the cemetery stayed. Give yourself time to walk it slowly — this is a place that rewards reading the stones rather than glancing at them.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Horace Follett
- · Myra Jones
- · Michael "Uncle Mac" Jones
Related events
- · 1918 influenza epidemic
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
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