Bailey County Cemetery

The flu that filled this cemetery in its first year swept much of the world in the fall of 1918 and the winter of 1919. An estimated twenty-five million Americans caught it and some 550,000 died. Across Texas that fall many schools and businesses closed and churches did not meet; Galveston shut its schools for two weeks in late October, and by then El Paso had reported 5,000 cases and 400 deaths. Bailey County itself was barely settled, with seventy-nine farms and 517 people counted in 1920.

What the plaque says

Bailey County Cemetery When Mariah "Aunt Rye" Long died in 1918, Emil and Anna Wellsandt offered a parcel of their land on this site for use as a public burial ground. Several others were buried in 1918, most of them victims of the influenza epidemic. The Bailey County Cemetery Association was formed that year. The cemetery served primarily the northern part of the county. The "Hill-Top" area of the cemetery was established in 1950 for the burial of indigents. Many early Bailey County settlers are interred in this cemetery, as are a number of war veterans. Neglect and vandalism spurred the defunct cemetery association to reorganize in 1996. The Bailey County Cemetery remains a chronicle of the area's pioneer settlers and their descendants. (1999)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Muleshoe National Wildlife Refuge — 23 mi
  The oldest national wildlife refuge in Texas, a ring of salt lakes in the sandhills south of Muleshoe where tens of thousands of sandhill cranes winter in a wet year.

More markers nearby

• Harden A. Douglass — steps away
• Old Hurley — 2.9 mi
• The Mule — 4.9 mi
• The Founding of Bailey County — 4.9 mi