Plemons Cemetery
Borger, Hutchinson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The town of Plemons was settled about 1898 when James A. Whittenburg, an area rancher, built a dugout house in a hill overlooking a bend in the Canadian River about seven miles northeast of this site. The town was named for Barney Plemons, son of Amarillo judge and State Legislator William Buford Plemons, and when Hutchinson County was organized in Spring 1901, Plemons was chosen county seat. E. E. Akers contracted to build a brick courthouse in that year. According to local oral history accounts, Mrs. E. E. Akers was the first to be interred in the Plemons Cemetery, probably in 1902. Plemons experienced slow growth as a river crossing town. By 1905 a wagon yard, barbershop, doctor's office, drugstore and mercantile store formed a business base for about fifteen families. Former buffalo hunter, scout and Hutchinson County's first Sheriff William (Billy) Dixon and his family operated a hotel for three years. The Amarillo branch of the Rock Island Line was completed through the area in 1926, stopping in Stinnett instead of Plemons. Voters chose Stinnett as the new county seat and Plemons gradually declined. The new county oil boom kept the town going for another two decades. The last burial in the Plemons Cemetery, which includes 66 graves, was that of Charles Ray Sessions, interred in 1953. In 1987 cemetery preservation efforts by local Boy Scouts uncovered a sandstone grave marker reading "Mrs. E. E. A.," lending significant credence to the oral history accounts that Mrs. Akers was the first to be interred on this site. The Plemons Cemetery serves as a chronicle of early Hutchinson County history. (1999)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Plemons rose about 1898 when rancher James Whittenburg dug in above a bend of the Canadian River, and it briefly thrived—chosen county seat in 1901, with a brick courthouse, a scatter of shops, and even a hotel run for a time by former buffalo hunter and county sheriff Billy Dixon. Its cemetery began around 1902 with the burial of Mrs. E.E. Akers. But when the railroad bypassed the town for Stinnett in 1926, voters moved the county seat and Plemons faded; an oil boom stretched its life another two decades before the last burial in 1953.
Why it matters
Plemons is a classic Panhandle ghost town whose cemetery outlived the settlement itself, chronicling how railroads and county-seat rivalries could make or unmake a frontier community.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
By the time Plemons took root above the Canadian River around 1898, the Texas Panhandle was in the last act of its transformation from open range to organized county. The great buffalo herds were gone, the Comanche and Kiowa had been pushed onto reservations two decades earlier, and cattlemen and their ranch hands were the region's first Anglo settlers. Into that thinly peopled country, a rancher's dugout carved into a hillside could become the nucleus of a town.
This was the Reconstruction-into-Gilded-Age frontier, where a settlement's fate hinged on two things: water and access. Plemons had the first, sitting near a bend and crossing of the Canadian, which made it a natural stopping point for wagons fording the river. The second — reliable transportation — was the prize every young Panhandle town chased, because a place that a railroad reached would live and a place it skipped would die.
When Hutchinson County was formally organized in the spring of 1901, the scramble for permanence was on. Being named county seat meant a courthouse, county business, and a reason for people to come and stay. Plemons won that early round, and for a moment it looked like the town that would anchor the county.
People & events
The town's origins run through a small cast of Panhandle figures. James A. Whittenburg, a local rancher, is credited with the first dwelling — that dugout above the river bend seven miles northeast of the cemetery site. The town itself carried the name of Barney Plemons, whose father, William Buford Plemons, was an Amarillo judge and state legislator, a reminder of how tightly early county politics and family names were bound together.
With county organization in 1901 came the machinery of a seat of government: E. E. Akers contracted to build a brick courthouse that very year. And in a poignant turn, local memory holds that Mrs. E. E. Akers — wife of the courthouse builder — was the first person laid to rest in the Plemons Cemetery, around 1902. For decades that was oral history, until 1987, when Boy Scouts working to preserve the grounds uncovered a sandstone marker reading 'Mrs. E. E. A.,' quietly confirming what the community had long remembered.
One name stands out for what he had already been before he ran a hotel here: William 'Billy' Dixon, a former buffalo hunter and scout who became Hutchinson County's first sheriff. He and his family operated a Plemons hotel for three years. By 1905 the town had gathered a wagon yard, barbershop, doctor's office, drugstore, and mercantile — a modest but complete little business base for the roughly fifteen families who called it home.
Its place in the American story
Plemons is a textbook case of a pattern that repeated across the American West: the town made and unmade by the railroad. For a generation, the arrival of steel rails decided which frontier settlements would grow into cities and which would empty out. When the Amarillo branch of the Rock Island Line was completed through the area in 1926, it stopped at Stinnett rather than Plemons — and that single routing decision was, in effect, a death sentence.
The county-seat rivalry that followed is equally characteristic of the era. Voters chose Stinnett as the new seat, the courthouse business followed the rails, and Plemons began its slow fade. All across the plains, the phrase 'county-seat war' described exactly this kind of contest, where a town's survival depended on holding the courthouse — and losing it hollowed a place out.
What kept Plemons breathing a while longer is its own kind of American story: the oil boom. The discovery of oil in the new county extended the town's life by roughly two more decades, a small echo of the petroleum rush that reshaped the Panhandle economy. But a boom is not a foundation, and when it passed, so did the town — leaving the cemetery as the most faithful record of who had lived and died there.
If you visit
Come to Plemons Cemetery expecting quiet. This is a place where the graves outlasted the town, so the setting itself is the story: open Panhandle sky, big horizons, and 66 markers standing where a busy little river-crossing community once stood. The last burial here was Charles Ray Sessions in 1953, so you are walking among stones that span roughly half a century of early Hutchinson County life.
Look for the older sandstone markers, and remember the 1987 discovery — the modest 'Mrs. E. E. A.' stone that confirmed a story the community had carried by word of mouth for eighty-five years. Reading the names in order is a way of reading the town's whole arc, from its founding families through the courthouse years and the oil-boom afterlife.
If you're building a Panhandle road trip around ghost towns and frontier history, this pairs naturally with a drive out toward the Canadian River country northeast of here, where Whittenburg first dug in. Bring water, tread respectfully, and take nothing but the sense of how quickly a place can rise and vanish on the American plains — leaving its cemetery to keep the account.
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
- · James A. Whittenburg
- · William "Billy" Dixon
- · Barney Plemons
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