Chalk Mountain Cemetery

The settlement took its name from a nearby elevation of white rock. The Handbook of Texas says the community itself was not established until after the Skipper ranch of 1860, which may have served as a trading center before the war. A post office opened in 1876 in Somervell County and had moved into Erath County by 1892. A Masonic lodge chartered in 1904 met upstairs in a frame store. Good roads to Stephenville drew business away, the post office closed in 1927, and the graves stayed.

What the plaque says

Chalk Mountain Cemetery The village of Chalk Mountain originated as a trading center before the Civil War. The earliest burial at Chalk Mountain Cemetery, the only burial ground to have served this community, is that of Abigal Davis (d. 1874), but the presence of unmarked burials indicates possible earlier use. Confederate veteran Hiram Berry Rogers (1840-1929) deeded the cemetery to the county in 1915. Over 350 graves, including those of Rogers and veterans of the Civil War, World Wars I and II, and the Korean War, are interred here. It has been maintained by a cemetery association since 1959. (1991)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Dinosaur Valley State Park — 8.5 mi
  Theropod and sauropod trackways of about 113 million years ago in the bed of the Paluxy River, a National Natural Landmark where R. T. Bird found the first distinct sauropod tracks in 1937.
• Meridian State Park — 21 mi
  A 505-acre park in Bosque County where World War I veterans of a Civilian Conservation Corps company dammed Bee Creek in 1933-34 for a 72-acre lake and cut stone buildings around it.
• Granbury Courthouse Square — 22 mi
  A National Register square of limestone storefronts around W. C. Dodson's Second Empire courthouse, whose clock tower citizens saved after a 1968 tornado.
• Cleburne State Park — 22 mi
  A 1930s Civilian Conservation Corps park on the old Chisholm Trail crossing country, with a spring-fed lake, a hand-carved three-tiered spillway and a CCC bridge in Johnson County.

More markers nearby

• Duffau Cemetery — 8.6 mi
• The Rev. Henry Hurley — 8.6 mi
• Duffau Baptist Church — 8.7 mi
• Somervell County — 10 mi