Oakwood Cemetery
Cisco, Eastland County, Texas
Marker Inscription
OAKWOOD CEMETERY DOLPHIN WILLIAM BINT (1845-1883) CAME TO THE UNITED STATES FROM ENGLAND IN 1876 AND SETTLED IN EASTLAND COUNTY IN THE RED GAP COMMUNITY. WHILE ON A JOURNEY TO FORT WORTH TO BUY LUMBER FOR THEIR HOME, HIS WIFE GAVE BIRTH TO A STILLBORN SON. HIS BURIAL UNDER AN OAK TREE IN THE FAMILY’S PASTURE BECAME THE FIRST IN OAKWOOD CEMETERY. THE BINTS RELOCATED TO DELMAR (NOW DOTHAN) AND THEIR PROPERTY WAS SOLD TO THE RAILWAY SURVEY, A PART OF WHICH WAS LATER DONATED TO THE CEMETERY IN 1910. THE FIRST CISCO CEMETERY ASSOCIATION WAS ORGANIZED IN 1899 TO CARE FOR THE CEMETERY. SHORTLY AFTER RECEIVING THEIR CHARTER IN 1900, THE MEMBERS RAISED FUNDS TO ENCLOSE THE GROUNDS, ERECT GATES, PLANT VEGETATION, AND IDENTIFY UNMARKED GRAVES. IN 1931, TEN ACRES WERE ADDED TO THE CEMETERY, AND AGAIN IN 1965 FROM THE CISCO INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT. DURING THE HEIGHT OF THE WORKS PROGRESS ADMINISTRATION (WPA), A 2,517 FT. ROCK WALL WAS ERECTED ON THREE SIDES OF THE CEMETERY. THE GENERAL LANDSCAPE OF THE CEMETERY IS TRADITIONAL WITH GRANITE, LIMESTONE, MARBLE, AND SANDSTONE GRAVE MARKERS WITH A PROMINENT WPA ROCK ARCHWAY AT THE SOUTHEAST ENTRANCE. A VARIETY OF NATURAL VEGETATION, INCLUDING MULBERRY, OAK, RED BUDS, CRAPE MYRTLE, CEDAR, PINE TREES, AND FERNS AFFORD SHADE AND BEAUTY TO THIS HISTORIC BURIAL SITE. OAKWOOD CEMETERY IS HOME TO OVER 7,000 GRAVES. MORE THAN SIX HUNDRED BURIALS ARE VETERANS OF THE CIVIL WAR, THE SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR, WORLD WAR I, WORLD WAR II, THE KOREAN WAR, AND THE VIETNAM WAR. THE CISCO CEMETERY ASSOCIATION ORGANIZED IN 1976 TO ESTABLISH A TRUST FUND AND PROVIDE CARE FOR THE CEMETERY, WHILE ALSO SERVING THE COMMUNITY OF CISCO. HISTORIC TEXAS CEMETERY – 2010
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
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.
Why it matters
The cemetery is a layered chronicle of a West Texas town — from frontier hardship to New Deal public works — and a resting place for generations of Americans who served in every modern war.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
Oakwood Cemetery's story begins in 1883, in the hard early days of settlement in Eastland County, out on the West Texas frontier. This was a landscape of small farming communities like Red Gap, where families staked their futures on the land and where the nearest source of something as basic as lumber might be a long, difficult journey away. Building a home meant traveling to a supply town and hauling the materials back — an ordinary errand that, on the frontier, carried real risk.
The town of Cisco grew up in this country as the railroads pushed through, and railroad surveys reshaped who owned what. The very ground the cemetery stands on passed through a railway survey before part of it was returned to community use — a small illustration of how completely the railroad reordered West Texas.
By the time the cemetery was formally organized and cared for, the region was moving out of its raw frontier phase into the settled rhythms of the Reconstruction and Gilded Age era and then the twentieth century. The cemetery grew right alongside the town, era by era, until it held the memory of the whole community.
People & events
The first grave was not planned; it was a tragedy. Dolphin William Bint, an Englishman who had come to the United States in 1876 and settled in the Red Gap community, was traveling with his wife to Fort Worth to buy lumber for their house when she gave birth to a stillborn son. The child was buried beneath an oak tree in the family's own pasture, and that small, sorrowful grave became the first in what would grow into Oakwood Cemetery.
The Bints themselves later moved on, relocating to the community then called Delmar, and their land was sold to the railway survey — a portion of which was eventually donated back to the cemetery in 1910. In the meantime the community had taken responsibility for the ground: the first Cisco Cemetery Association organized in 1899, and soon after receiving its charter in 1900 its members raised money to enclose the grounds, erect gates, plant vegetation, and identify unmarked graves.
The cemetery kept growing — ten acres added in 1931, more in 1965 — but its most striking feature came from the Great Depression. During the height of the Works Progress Administration, workers raised a rock wall stretching 2,517 feet along three sides of the grounds, crowned by a handsome stone archway at the southeast entrance. Decades later, in 1976, a new Cisco Cemetery Association organized to establish a trust fund and secure the site's long-term care.
Its place in the American story
A cemetery like this one is a chronicle of the American experience written small. It opens with the classic frontier story — hardship, distance, a family's private grief becoming the seed of a community institution — and then layers on every chapter the country lived through afterward.
The WPA wall and archway tie this quiet West Texas ground directly to one of the largest national efforts in American history. During the Depression, the Works Progress Administration put millions of Americans to work building the everyday infrastructure of their own communities, and stonework exactly like this — durable, dignified, made by local hands — is its signature across the country. Standing here, you are looking at the New Deal itself, carried out at the scale of one town.
And then there are the more than six hundred veterans buried among the cemetery's 7,000-plus graves, men who served from the Civil War through the Spanish-American War, both World Wars, Korea, and Vietnam. In that single fact, a small-town burial ground becomes a record of every major conflict of the modern American era.
If you visit
Enter, if you can, through the southeast gate, so the WPA rock archway is the first thing that frames your visit. Then let your eye follow the long rock wall — more than 2,500 feet of it wrapping three sides of the grounds. Knowing it was laid during the Depression by workers earning their keep gives every stone a bit of weight.
Take your time reading the grave markers, cut from granite, limestone, marble, and sandstone. Look especially for the veterans' graves; walking from a Civil War headstone to one from Vietnam, you cross more than a century of American service in a few minutes' stroll.
The setting itself is part of the reward. Mulberry, oak, redbud, crape myrtle, cedar, and pine shade the grounds, and the whole place has the calm, well-tended feeling of a community that has cared for its dead for well over a century. It's a contemplative stop, and a natural one for anyone tracing the layered history of small-town West Texas — quiet, welcoming, and unexpectedly moving.
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
- · Dolphin William Bint
Related events
- · Works Progress Administration
Themes & tags
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