Rocksprings Cemetery
Rocksprings, Edwards County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The town of Rocksprings traces its beginnings to 1889, when J. R. Sweeten dug the first water well in the area to serve new settlers. Three years later, in 1892, Sweeten donated two acres of land to be used as a community cemetery. There were some burials at this site prior to its formal designation as a cemetery. Two children, Willie J. Blackwell and Ben Smith, were interred here in 1891. Many of the people buried in the Rocksprings Cemetery in the early years were travelers passing through the area. Among the more than one thousand graves are those of victims of a devastating tornado which struck the town of April 12, 1927. Over the years, additional land acquisitions have increased the size of the cemetery. Iron fencing which once surrounded some grave sites was donated to scrap metal drives during World War II. The Rocksprings Cemetery Association, which originated in 1897, was formally chartered by the state in 1967. Through such projects as surveys and landscaping, the association continues to maintain the historic graveyard, which remains as a visible link to the community's past. (1989)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Rocksprings sprang up on the arid Edwards Plateau after J. R. Sweeten sank the area's first water well in 1889, and within a few years a two-acre plot was set aside to bury the settlers and passing travelers of this remote ranching country. The graveyard grew alongside the town, absorbing the dead from the catastrophic tornado that tore through Rocksprings in April 1927. Even its iron fencing tells a story, given up to World War II scrap drives.
Why it matters
A frontier cemetery like this is a ledger of who built a hardscrabble West Texas town and what they endured, from lonely travelers to a single day of disaster that reshaped the community.
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Related people
- · J. R. Sweeten
Related events
- · 1927 Rocksprings tornado
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
First Baptist Church of Rocksprings
Rocksprings, TX
Organized by a handful of believers in 1893, this Baptist congregation took root in the earliest days of Rocksprings and weathered the same trials as the town around it. When the 1927 tornado flattened much of the community, Texans arrived from far and wide to help rebuild both the town and the church. Through Depression and wartime the congregation grew, even sponsoring a Mexican American mission that became its own Sunday school.
First Baptist Church of Barksdale
Barksdale, TX
Founded in 1883 with nineteen members, the Barksdale Baptist Church was the first Baptist congregation in this remote Edwards County community, and for generations its baptisms were held at the nearby Nueces River crossing. A frame sanctuary of 1906 served until this native-stone building replaced it in 1943, begun by a local builder and finished by the congregation itself. Its simple front-gabled form, stone veneer, and exposed rafter ends reflect the hand-built churches of the Texas Hill Country.
Wooten Cemetery
Telegraph, TX
Like many Hill Country burial grounds, Wooten Cemetery began with a single sorrow—the 1880 grave of one-year-old Cornelius Clay Jackson, whose headstone remains its oldest. His mother followed the next year, and among the graves lies a family thought to have died of tuberculosis, a reminder of frontier medicine's limits. The cemetery takes its name from Simon Lee Wooten, a Civil War veteran who came to Texas from Georgia "upon the death of the Old South."
Real County
Leakey, TX
In the rugged canyon country of the Edwards Plateau, the settlement of Leakey straddled a county line, forcing residents to trek over mountains and rivers to conduct official business after the county seat moved to Rocksprings in 1891. After a rejected 1895 petition, the legislature finally created a new county in 1913—named, by amendment, for rancher and senator Julius Real. Farming and ranching sustained a rural way of life until highways arrived in the 1930s and, later, tourism and hunting reshaped the local economy.