Bowman Cemetery

The town that grew up near this old German cemetery is much younger than its graves. Lakeside City began in the early 1960s on the southern shore of Lake Wichita, and residents voted to incorporate on September 7, 1963, choosing a mayor and council. The city organized a water department in 1972, built a city hall in 1976, and began garbage collection and a volunteer fire department in 1977, adding ambulance service in 1981. By 1980 it had 515 people, several stores, a day school and a Baptist church, and by 2000 it had 984.

What the plaque says

Land for this cemetery was donated in 1885 by W. A. Bacon to the Evangelical Missionary Society of North America. The first burial, that of Christina Schmith (b. 1857), took place the same year. The unique sandstone mausoleum on the south side of the cemetery was built about the turn of the century by A. F. Decker (d. 1927) for his parents. Many of the burials are those of German immigrants, reflecting the influence of the German culture in this area. A cemetery association was organized in 1940 to care for the graveyard. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Kell House Museum — 6.5 mi
  The 1909 Classic Revival house of Frank Kell, the miller and railroad builder who helped make Wichita Falls a city, shown by guided tour with its family furniture still in place.
• World's Littlest Skyscraper — 7.1 mi
  A four-story brick tower in downtown Wichita Falls, 40 feet tall and 10 feet wide, the leftover of a 1919 oil-boom office deal in which, the story goes, investors misread inches as feet.
• Lake Arrowhead State Park — 10 mi
  A prairie park on the north shore of the Wichita Falls water-supply lake, which drowned the town of Halsell in 1965-66, with mesquite campsites, a lighted pier and more than 200 bird species.
• Royal Theater — 16 mi
  Archer City's movie house, burned in 1965, given a false front for The Last Picture Show and brought back by the town in the 1990s as a working stage on Main Street.

More markers nearby

• Call Field — 3.3 mi
• Wichita County — 3.6 mi
• Wichita Falls Traction Company — 5.6 mi
• Wichita Falls Junior College — 6.3 mi