Trinity Portland Cement Company Cemetery
Dallas, Dallas County, Texas
Marker Inscription
El Camposanto de Cemento Grande De La Compania Trinity Portland The Southwestern States Portland Cement Company was established in this area in 1909. Many of the company's employees were Mexican immigrants who came to this area to escape the Mexican Revolution. The company name was changed after Trinity Portland Cement Company purchased the business in 1915. Two company villages were built near the cement plant, one for Anglos and one for Mexican laborers. About 1918, the company donated land for use as a community cemetery by its Hispanic employees. It is believed that the first people buried in the cemetery were victims of the 1918 influenza epidemic, including many children. A number of cement company workers and their family members were interred here, and the cemetery was cared for by residents of the company town. The last burial occurred when Eladio R. Martinez (1921 - 1945) was reinterred here. A native of the village, he was killed in action in the Pacific during World War II, and was originally buried in the Philippines. Although the company housing was removed from this area by 1959, this cemetery remains as a reminder of the village which once occupied this area, sometimes referred to as Eagle Ford, Texas.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This cemetery is the last trace of a company town at Eagle Ford, west of Dallas, where a cement plant opened in 1909 and drew many Mexican immigrants fleeing the upheaval of the Mexican Revolution. The company built segregated villages—one for Anglos, one for Mexican laborers—and around 1918 donated land for a cemetery for its Hispanic workers, whose earliest burials are believed to have been victims of the 1918 influenza epidemic, many of them children. The houses were gone by 1959, but the graves remain.
Why it matters
It preserves the memory of the immigrant labor that powered Texas industry and the segregated world those workers were made to live and be buried in.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the first decade of the twentieth century, Dallas was growing fast, and growing cities need cement. Portland cement, made by firing limestone and clay in huge kilns and grinding the result into powder, was the material of the age. It went into sidewalks, foundations, bridges, and the new concrete buildings rising across Texas. The limestone country along the Trinity River west of Dallas made a natural home for that industry, and in 1909 the Southwestern States Portland Cement Company set up operations here.
At the same moment, Mexico was coming apart. The Mexican Revolution, which broke out in 1910, brought years of fighting, economic collapse, and danger to ordinary families. Hundreds of thousands of people crossed the border north. Many found work on railroads, farms, and in industrial plants across Texas and the Southwest, often in hard, hot, physically punishing jobs.
Company towns were common in that era. A business that needed a steady workforce in an out-of-the-way place would build the housing, and often the store and the school as well. In Texas those villages usually followed the segregation of the time. That is what happened here: one village for Anglo workers and a separate one for Mexican laborers. The cemetery you see today belonged to that second village.
Then, in 1918, came the influenza pandemic, the deadliest disease outbreak in modern American history. It reached nearly every community in the country, and crowded working-class settlements were often hit especially hard.
People & events
Imagine a family arriving at the plant around 1910 or soon after. They have left a country at war, carrying what they could. The father, or perhaps a grown son, takes a job in the dust and heat of the cement works, and the family moves into company housing in the Mexican village. In 1915 the business changes hands and becomes the Trinity Portland Cement Company, but the work stays the same.
Around 1918 the company gave land for a burial ground for its Hispanic employees, and the timing is no coincidence. The first graves here are believed to hold victims of the 1918 influenza epidemic, and many of them were children. Nobody knows every name. What is known is that this patch of ground began as a community's answer to grief, a place to bury its own close to home.
Over the following decades workers and their family members were laid to rest here, and the people of the company town looked after the graves themselves. A cemetery that is cared for by neighbors rather than by an institution says a great deal about how tightly a community held together.
The last burial tells a story of its own. Eladio R. Martinez was born in the village in 1921 and grew up in the shadow of the cement plant. He went to war and was killed in action in the Pacific in 1945. He was first buried in the Philippines, far from home. After the war his remains came back and were reinterred here, among the people he grew up with. One of the village's own sons came home to the ground his community had set apart a generation before.
Its place in the American story
The concrete of modern America was built in part by immigrant hands. Stories of the nation's industrial growth often leave out the workers who fed the kilns and hauled the stone. This small cemetery is one of the few physical records left of the Mexican immigrants who did that work in North Texas.
It also records segregation honestly. Separate villages for Anglo and Mexican workers were part of the ordinary structure of life in Texas industry, and that separation followed people even into death. Seeing a graveyard set apart for one group of employees makes an abstract history concrete.
The story of Eladio Martinez links this place to one of the great themes of the twentieth century. Mexican American men served in large numbers in World War II, often coming from communities that faced discrimination at home. After the war, families across the country could ask for their loved ones' remains to be brought back from overseas, and many did. His reburial here ties a company village in Dallas County to the war in the Pacific.
Finally, the site shows how fragile working-class history can be. The houses were gone by 1959. Without the graves, and the people who remembered them, the village sometimes called Eagle Ford might have disappeared from memory entirely.
If you visit
Come quietly. This is a burial ground, and many of the people resting here were children taken by the 1918 epidemic. Walk slowly, read what you can on the older markers, and notice how weather and time have worked on them. Some graves may be modest or hard to read, which is part of their story.
As you stand there, try to picture what is no longer around you: the rows of company houses, the families, the plant nearby with its kilns and dust. The cemetery is the last piece of a whole village, and imagining the rest is the best way to understand it.
Look for the grave of Eladio R. Martinez, the last person buried here. It is a good place to stop and think about a young man who grew up in this village and died far away in the Pacific.
The site sits on the western side of Dallas, so it fits easily into a day exploring the city's history. Pairing it with places that tell the story of Dallas's growth makes a strong point: the city's big buildings and roads depended on industries like this one, and on workers whose names are kept here.
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
- · Eladio R. Martinez
Related events
- · Mexican Revolution
- · 1918 influenza epidemic
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Eagle Ford Community
Dallas, TX
Eagle Ford took root beside an important crossing of the Trinity River's west fork, where settlers like the Hortons arrived in 1844 and built farms, a grist mill, and a cemetery. Railroad and depot land donated by James Horton spurred the village until the line pushed on to Fort Worth and the town began to fade. A new chapter opened in 1907 when Michigan investors founded a Portland cement company here, drawing Mexican immigrant workers whose descendants — among them decorated World War II soldier Eladio Martinez — enriched the community's culture.
Trinity Farms/Rancho Grande Cemetery
Dallas, TX
This cemetery is all that remains of the community that lived and labored on the Dallas County Trinity Farms, a 3,000-acre commercial operation — also called Rancho Grande — that ran from about 1915 to 1946. The farm provided housing, schools, and a commissary for its workers, who were largely Mexican citizens, many fleeing the Mexican Revolution, and a sizable number of African Americans. In keeping with the era's segregation, the children attended separate schools and the dead were buried in separate sections.
Site of Sanger Brothers Department Store
Dallas, TX
The Sanger Brothers retail empire traces to 1857, when German immigrant Isaac Sanger opened a small dry-goods store in McKinney and was later joined by his brothers Lehman, Philip, Alex, and Sam. The first store under the Sanger Bros. name opened in Bryan in 1867, and the family shrewdly planted new stores along the advancing railroad, reaching Dallas in 1872. Nationally known for innovative marketing and merchandising, the firm helped drive the city's commercial rise.
Shady Grove Road Bridge
Irving, TX
The Shady Grove Road Bridge rose in 1931 across the Trinity River, part of a broader flood-control effort that followed the disastrous 1908 flood and reshaped the river's channels by 1930. Its 1,778-foot span, anchored by a Parker pony truss, connected southeast Irving to the new industrial district of west Dallas and fueled Irving's growth, eventually carrying more than 14,000 vehicles a day. Closed for safety in 1984, it was replaced in 1990 by a new bridge that still links Irving and Dallas.