Terrace Cemetery
Post, Garza County, Texas
Marker Inscription
IN 1907, YOUNG VERA WESTBROOK DIED IN POST CITY AND WAS LAID TO REST IN A GRAVE NEAR TWO DRAW ROAD. IN 1908, WITH THE DEATH OF VERTIE ROGERS CONN, THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF THE DOUBLE U CO. TOLD TOWN FOUNDER C. W. POST IN BATTLE CREEK, MICHIGAN, ABOUT THE NEED FOR A CEMETERY. POST REPLIED “I WISH THERE WAS NO NEED FOR ANY SUCH SPOT, BUT WE HAVE TO CONDUCT OUR AFFAIRS IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE DICTATION OF A POWER MUCH SUPERIOR TO OUR OWN INTELLIGENCE.” POST PROVIDED LAND FOR THE CEMETERY AND INSTRUCTIONS FOR ITS LAYOUT. CONN WAS THE FIRST BURIAL ON OCT. 13, 1908. WESTBROOK WAS ALSO REINTERRED HERE. THE ORIGINAL 19.35 ACRE CEMETERY PLATTED IN 1912 HAS EXPANDED TO INCLUDE SEVERAL THOUSAND BURIALS, SERVING AS A TESTAMENT TO GENERATIONS OF FAMILIES.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Terrace Cemetery grew out of the earliest days of Post City, the model town founded on the Caprock in 1907 by cereal magnate C.W. Post. When two young deaths made a burial ground necessary, the Double U Company appealed to Post at his Battle Creek, Michigan headquarters; he supplied both land and a layout, along with a somber note on bowing to a power greater than his own. Platted at just under twenty acres in 1912, the cemetery has since grown to hold several thousand graves.
Why it matters
The cemetery ties a Progressive-era company town on the Texas plains to the paternalistic vision of C.W. Post, one of the era's great industrialists, who planned even his settlers' final resting place from afar.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
At the opening of the twentieth century, the high, flat plains of West Texas were being remade by ambition and money. This was the Progressive era, a time when industrialists and reformers alike believed that with enough planning and capital, a better society could be built more or less from scratch — and few places show that faith more plainly than the model town that grew up on the Caprock in 1907.
The man behind it was C.W. Post, the cereal magnate whose Postum and Grape-Nuts had made him wealthy far away in Battle Creek, Michigan. Post bought up vast acreage on the Texas plains and set out to found a planned community, laying out streets and farms according to his own ideas about how people ought to live and work.
A new town, however carefully designed, quickly runs into the oldest human need of all. Within a year of its founding, the young settlement had to reckon with death, and the tidy plans made in a Michigan headquarters had to make room for a burial ground.
People & events
The cemetery's story is told through two early deaths. In 1907, young Vera Westbrook died in the new town and was buried in a lonely grave out near Two Draw Road. The following year, when Vertie Rogers Conn died, the directors of the Double U Company — Post's land and ranching enterprise — wrote to the founder to tell him plainly that the town now needed a cemetery.
Post's reply, sent from Battle Creek, is what gives this marker its unexpected weight. He answered that he wished there were no need for such a place at all, but acknowledged that the town's affairs had to be conducted according to the dictates of a power far greater than human intelligence. It is a strikingly humble note from a man accustomed to bending a whole landscape to his will.
He followed the sentiment with action, providing the land and even instructions for how the cemetery should be laid out. Conn became the first burial here in October 1908, and Westbrook was reinterred so that she too would rest in the proper ground. The cemetery was formally platted at just under twenty acres in 1912 and has since grown to hold several thousand graves.
Its place in the American story
This quiet cemetery connects to one of the most fascinating figures of America's industrial age. C.W. Post embodied the era's boundless confidence — a self-made manufacturer who believed the methods that built a business empire could also build a community, and who was willing to spend a fortune proving it out on the raw Texas plains.
That same restless, controlling optimism ran through everything he touched. This was a man who would later stage famous experiments trying to coax rain from the sky with explosions, convinced that human ingenuity could master even the weather. Planning the exact layout of a town's cemetery from a desk a thousand miles away fits that character perfectly.
The planned company town was a distinctly Progressive-era experiment, an attempt to answer the disorder of the age with order imposed from above. What makes this site so poignant is that the founder's paternal reach extended all the way to the resting place of his settlers — a reminder that even the most carefully engineered community is finally shaped by the things no planner controls.
If you visit
The cemetery sits on the Caprock, that dramatic edge where the flat high plains of West Texas break away, and the light and wind up here have a wide, clean quality that suits a burial ground. Terrace Cemetery is still very much in use, its several thousand graves spanning generations of local families.
As you walk, notice the order of the place — the deliberate layout that traces back to instructions sent from far away when the town was brand new. Look for the oldest section and the story of those first burials; the marker frames the whole ground as a testament to the families who have come and gone here since 1908.
If you are traveling the plains of West Texas, this is a contemplative stop that rewards a slow read of the marker. Stand a moment in the open air and consider the strange tenderness of a hard-driving industrialist who, faced with the death of two young people in a town he had willed into being, could find no better words than an admission that some things lie beyond any planner's control.
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
- · C.W. Post
- · Vera Westbrook
- · Vertie Rogers Conn
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Terrace Cemetery Gateway
Post, TX
When cereal magnate C. W. Post founded Post City in 1908, workers gathered round rocks from nearby ranch canyons to build the piers of this cemetery gateway. Scottish immigrants George Samson and James Napier designed and built it, and Samson went on to serve the community as a leader for half a century.
The Post-Hundley House
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Cereal magnate Charles W. Post founded the town of Post as a model community, and this native-stone cottage — quarried by hand from the nearby Caprock and built by his Double U Company in 1907 — served as his residence during frequent visits. The design came from a staffer at his Battle Creek, Michigan headquarters. Later families preserved the structure through the twentieth century.
Post
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Cereal magnate C. W. Post founded this planned town on the Caprock in 1907, watering it first by windmill and later from White River Lake. Post envisioned a self-sufficient community sustained by ranching, farming, and industry — anchored by the Postex Cotton Mills, whose sheets and pillowcases gave the town year-round work. By the 1960s it also served as a hub for more than 1,750 oil wells across Garza County.
Charles W. Post
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Charles W. Post (1854-1914), the internationally known creator of Post Cereals and an advertising genius, turned his fortune to town-building in 1906. Buying the Curry Comb Ranch and adjoining land — some 225,000 acres — he laid out Post City as a self-contained model community of towns and farms. He financed and supervised the work without profit, offering settlers homes and businesses far below cost in pursuit of his vision of debt-free private ownership.