Clairette Cemetery

Clairette is a railroad creation with a soap-brand name. According to the Handbook of Texas, the community was established when the Texas Central Railroad was built through the area in the early 1880s, and it was named for a popular brand of soap. By 1940 it had 275 residents, five businesses, several churches and a post office. Changes in agriculture and transportation then wore down its prosperity, and the Handbook estimates the population at fifty-five from 1968 until 2000. The 1984 county highway map still showed a church, a community hall and three businesses.

What the plaque says

Clairette Cemetery Joseph and Elizabeth Salmon and their children moved to the Republic of Texas in 1839. They settled in this area in 1854. When their 15-year-old son, Albert, died in 1858, he was buried at his favorite campsite in a grove of oak trees on the family land. Albert's brother, Joseph Salmon, Jr., deeded the acre of land surrounding the grave site for use as a community cemetery in 1876. Additional land acquisitions over the years have increased the size of the cemetery. The diverse styles of gravestones found here serve as reflections of the area's pioneer heritage. (1991)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Dublin Bottling Works — 12 mi
  The Erath County plant that bottled Dr Pepper with cane sugar from 1891 until a 2012 settlement ended its Dr Pepper license, and that still makes its own sodas the same way.
• Hamilton County Courthouse — 24 mi
  A limestone courthouse of 1886-87 on the Hamilton square, built after the county's 1878 courthouse burned, enlarged in the early 1930s and rededicated in 2012 after restoration.
• Dinosaur Valley State Park — 24 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 — 28 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.

More markers nearby

• Pecan Cemetery — 7.0 mi
• Selden — 7.2 mi
• Duffau Baptist Church — 7.3 mi
• Duffau Cemetery — 7.9 mi