New Red Rock Cemetery
Red Rock, Bastrop County, Texas
Marker Inscription
As early as the 1850s, settlers of the community of Red Rock had established homes in this area. In 1870, the Red Rock Post Office opened, and by the mid-1870s, the settlement supported the Red Rock Male and Female Academy. The town grew, with about 150 residents by the mid-1880s. In 1890, the MK&T Railroad built about one mile east of Red Rock, and residents moved their homes and businesses here. The growing community established this cemetery in 1913, when L.A. and Adirenne Turner conveyed one acre of land to trustees L.G. Ellis, Gus Jung and N.B. Harris. The first documented burial is that of S.B. Harris, who died on April 22, 1913. In 1922, the cemetery's Turner Section was established when the Turners doanted an dditional quarter acre. In 1952, the Rev. Eugene Stewart Neuenschwander deeded almost half an acre to the cemetery, and in 1965 and 1993, the Petty family donated land and lots to the cemetery association, which maintains the burial ground today. Burials include those of miliatry veterans and members of franternal organizations, as well as generations of area residents, forever linking the New Red Rock Cemetery to the community's rich history. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2003
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Settlers reached the Red Rock area by the 1850s, and by the mid-1870s the community supported a post office and the Red Rock Male and Female Academy. When the MK&T Railroad laid track about a mile east in 1890, residents picked up their homes and businesses and moved to the rails—and in 1913 established this cemetery on land given by L. A. and Adrienne Turner. Families have donated ground repeatedly since, and the cemetery association still tends it today.
Why it matters
The move from old Red Rock to the railroad line, recorded in this cemetery's founding, captures how the coming of the railroads redrew the map of rural Texas towns.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
The community of Red Rock took root early, with settlers establishing homes in the area as far back as the 1850s. By 1870 it had a post office, and by the mid-1870s it supported the Red Rock Male and Female Academy—a sign of an ambitious little settlement that wanted schooling and permanence, not just survival. By the mid-1880s some 150 people called it home.
Then came the railroad, and with it the great reshaping of rural Texas. In 1890 the MK&T—the Missouri, Kansas & Texas line, known widely as the "Katy"—built its tracks about a mile east of the existing town. In that era a railroad was the difference between a town's growth and its slow fading, and the people of Red Rock answered the way many communities did: they picked up their homes and businesses and moved them to the rails.
This cemetery, established in 1913, belongs to that relocated town. It is the burial ground of a community that had literally moved itself to stay alive in the railroad age, a Progressive-era settlement making a permanent place for its dead even as the living had recently pulled up stakes.
People & events
The cemetery's founding is a story of neighbors giving land. In 1913 L. A. and Adrienne Turner conveyed one acre to trustees L. G. Ellis, Gus Jung, and N. B. Harris, and the burial ground began. Its first documented burial came that same year—S. B. Harris, who died on April 22, 1913, opening the long record the cemetery still keeps.
The generosity did not stop there. In 1922 the Turners gave an additional quarter acre, establishing the cemetery's Turner Section. In 1952 the Rev. Eugene Stewart Neuenschwander deeded nearly half an acre more, and in 1965 and again in 1993 the Petty family donated land and lots. Each gift, spread across eighty years, added to the ground and tied another family's name to its keeping.
Those buried here reflect the whole community—military veterans, members of fraternal organizations, and generations of area residents. The cemetery association that received these gifts tends the grounds to this day, carrying forward the care that so many hands have added to over the decades.
Its place in the American story
The relocation recorded in this cemetery's founding captures one of the defining forces of American history: the power of the railroad to redraw the map. When the Katy line laid track a mile from the old town in 1890, the community moved to meet it—a small, vivid example of how the coming of the rails made and unmade towns across the country. Settlements that reached the tracks thrived; those left behind often withered.
The cemetery itself embodies another deep American pattern—the community burial ground built and sustained by neighbors giving land, decade after decade. The Turners, the Neuenschwanders, and the Pettys, contributing across the twentieth century, show how such places grow not from grand endowment but from the steady generosity of local families and the volunteer associations that keep them.
And in the range of those interred—veterans, members of fraternal lodges, and ordinary residents across generations—the cemetery holds the full social fabric of a rural American town. Fraternal organizations and veterans' networks were central pillars of community life in that era, and their presence in the ground here binds this one small place to the wider story of how Americans organized, served, and remembered.
If you visit
A cemetery like this rewards a slow and thoughtful visit. Read it as the record of a town that once moved itself: the community had recently shifted to the railroad line when it laid out this ground in 1913, and the burials that followed are the settled, permanent mark of a place that had chosen to endure.
Look for the signs of how the grounds grew by gift—the Turner Section added in 1922, and the later additions from other families that expanded the cemetery across the twentieth century. Among the graves you may find veterans and members of fraternal organizations resting alongside ordinary residents, generation upon generation of the community together in one place. The marker notes the cemetery was recognized as a Historic Texas Cemetery in 2003.
Red Rock lies in the rural reaches of Bastrop County, and this quiet spot fits a road trip built around the small towns the railroads made and remade. Stand a while and consider the plain truth the ground holds: a whole community once moved to the rails to survive, and here is where it chose to stay for good.
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
- · L. A. Turner
- · Adrienne Turner
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Old Red Rock Cemetery
Red Rock, TX
Red Rock grew up where the Austin–Port Lavaca stagecoach road crossed the Bastrop–Gonzales trail, a typical crossroads settlement of frontier Texas that shifted a mile east in 1892 to meet the new railroad. Its old cemetery holds more than 370 graves, including trail drivers and veterans of the Texas Revolution, the Mexican War, and the Civil War. The first documented burial dates to 1864, though earlier homemade sandstone markers may have been lost.
Bastrop Christian Church
Bastrop, TX
Founded before 1857, this congregation first gathered in the county courthouse, then in a rock church raised on this site in 1867. The New England Victorian building standing today was erected in 1895 and still rings the old rock church's bell — a bell that once called passengers aboard a Colorado River steamboat. Its history threads together frontier worship and the river commerce that once moved through Bastrop.
Early History of the City of Bastrop
Bastrop, TX
Long home to the Tonkawa and Comanche, this stretch of the Colorado River became strategic when Spanish explorers blazed part of El Camino Real, the King's Highway, across it in the years after 1691. A fort and community rose here in 1805 to guard the road, and by 1825 the site was one of the first settlements in Stephen F. Austin's colony, first called Mina and then renamed Bastrop in 1837 for the influential land agent Baron de Bastrop. Its founding families went on to serve in the Texas Revolution and the Mexican War, and the town became county seat and home to a noted military academy.
The Gotier Trace
Bastrop, TX
Blazed in the 1820s, the Gotier Trace linked San Felipe, capital of Stephen F. Austin's colony, with Bastrop, threading across the counties of early Anglo Texas. It was no engineered highway but a marked path—dusty in drought, boggy in rain—named for settler James Gotier, who with several kin was killed in a raid near the route in 1837. From such rough traces the pattern of Texas travel was first drawn.