Cementerio Loma De La Cruz (Hill of the Cross Cemetery)

Rev. Ramon V. Palomares served in a field that Methodists had organized only recently. Methodist work among Spanish-speaking Texans began in earnest in 1874, when the West Texas Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, formed a Spanish-speaking district. The Mexican Border Mission Conference, organized in 1885, counted 1,370 members and thirty-one ministers. In 1914 the Spanish-language churches east of the Pecos were reorganized as the Texas Mexican Mission, with 1,876 members, and by 1930 it had grown into an annual conference of 3,837. In 1939 it took the name Rio Grande Conference.

What the plaque says

Cementerio Loma De La Cruz (Hill of the Cross Cemetery) Early land developer Paula Losoya Taylor Rivers (ca. 1830-1902) realized that the people of Del Rio's Mexican Colony had no official cemetery in which to bury their dead. She donated four acres to be designated as a cemetery in 1884. Also buried here are three former U. S. Army Indian Scouts and the Rev. Ramon V. Palomares, first pastor of Del Rio's Mexican American Methodist Church. A cross placed at the top of a hill gave the cemetery its name. The last burial here took place in 1933. A cemetery association restored and maintains the graveyard. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Val Verde Winery — 0.8 mi
  The family winery an Italian immigrant founded on Del Rio's irrigated land in 1883, which outlasted Prohibition by selling table grapes and kept Texas wine alive into the 1970s.
• Whitehead Memorial Museum — 1.0 mi
  A village of old Del Rio buildings set along a working irrigation canal, from an 1870 store to a 1925 doctor's office, with Judge Roy Bean buried on the grounds.
• San Felipe Creek — 1.3 mi
  The spring-fed creek that made Del Rio, rising from the third largest springs in Texas and running past swimming holes and a hike-and-bike trail through town.
• Amistad National Recreation Area — 10 mi
  The American side of the reservoir the United States and Mexico finished in 1969 where three rivers meet, with painted shelters still reachable by boat when the water allows.

More markers nearby

• Val Verde Winery — 0.8 mi
• Santos S. Garza — 0.8 mi
• Taylor-Rivers House — 0.9 mi
• San Felipe High School — 0.9 mi