Jourdanton City Cemetery
Jourdanton, Atascosa County, Texas
Marker Inscription
T. H. Zanderson and city namesake Jourdan Campbell bought the 40,000-acre Toby Ranch in 1907 and laid out the town of Jourdanton. The original plat included two blocks designated for use as a cemetery. The Artesian Belt Railroad built through the site and the town grew quickly, with a lumberyard, cotton gin, grocery stores, bank, restaurants, hotels, churches and a school among the early establishments. The railroad improved shipping of livestock and produce to San Antonio and other points. In 1910, citizens voted to move the Atascosa County seat from Pleasanton to Jourdanton. The Jourdanton City Cemetery was originally used by all denominations; Lutheran and Catholic cemeteries were later established in other locations. The earliest marked graves here are those of Roland Purgason, an infant who died in 1910, and William P. White, who died in 1911. The Jourdanton City Cemetery Association organized in 1918, with John Moore as first president. The association added acreage to the cemetery in the 1950s, enlarging the graveyard to more than three city blocks. About one hundred veterans buried here have been identified, at least seven having served during the Civil War. Notable burials and gravestones include members of fraternal organizations and several law enforcement personnel, including four sheriffs and one deputy who was killed in the line of duty. Grave markers vary from simple wooden crosses to curbed family plots. The Jourdanton City Cemetery shows the cultural and economic diversity of this South Texas town, built rapidly because of the railroad and attracting people of varied ethnic backgrounds who made the site their home. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2008
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Jourdanton was platted in 1907 after two men bought the 40,000-acre Toby Ranch, and the arrival of the Artesian Belt Railroad made the town boom—with a lumberyard, cotton gin, bank and hotels—so quickly that in 1910 voters moved the county seat here from Pleasanton. The city cemetery, set aside in the original plat, holds early settlers, some hundred veterans including Civil War soldiers, and four sheriffs, its graves ranging from wooden crosses to curbed family plots.
Why it matters
The cemetery records how the railroad conjured whole South Texas towns into being almost overnight and drew a mix of peoples who built them.
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Related people
- · T. H. Zanderson
- · Jourdan Campbell
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Jourdan Campbell
Jourdanton, TX
Jourdan Campbell, son of Campbellton founder John Campbell, grew up in Atascosa County and became a county commissioner in the 1890s. In 1907 he and Col. T. H. Zanderson bought the 33,760-acre Tobey Ranch, part of which became the town of Jourdanton, where Campbell served as bank vice president and lobbied hard for a railroad. His efforts helped make Jourdanton the county seat in 1910 and pushed a highway project linking the county's towns.
Jourdanton
Jourdanton, TX
In 1909 two entrepreneurs—merchant Jourdan Campbell and Danish wool-and-mohair man Theodore Zanderson—laid out a town on their ranch and persuaded a land speculator to bring the railroad through; the first train arrived that September. Jourdanton quickly gained utilities, a bank, a newspaper and churches, and in 1910 wrested the county seat from Pleasanton. Oil and gas discoveries in the 1940s and later lignite mining kept the town growing well after the railroads stopped running.
San Antonio, Uvalde and Gulf Railroad
Pleasanton, TX
Born in 1909 as the short-line Crystal City and Uvalde, this railroad grew as deep artesian wells turned the dry brush country into profitable irrigated farmland that needed a way to reach market. By 1912 it reached a new depot at North Pleasanton and, extended toward the coast, took the name San Antonio, Uvalde and Gulf—nicknamed 'The Sausage.' Later absorbed by Missouri Pacific and then Union Pacific, its tracks remain the last line between San Antonio and Corpus Christi.
North Pleasanton
Pleasanton, TX
When the Crystal City and Uvalde Railroad—renamed the San Antonio, Uvalde and Gulf—pushed toward Pleasanton, its officials laid out a brand-new town in 1912 at the line's division point to house railroad workers. North Pleasanton boomed with a Mission Revival depot, a bridge over the Atascosa River, hotels, a bank, and businesses along First Street, and by 1914 a newspaper touted it as the fastest-growing town in the South. But when Missouri Pacific bought the line in 1927 and closed the shops, the Depression-era town faded, finally voting to consolidate with Pleasanton in 1961.