Cook Cemetery

The flood that likely ended burials here came on September 27, 1873, when heavy rains sent Sulphur Creek through Lampasas. Several people died and the damage was extensive. The water also ruined most of the county records left after the frame courthouse burned in December 1871, and until 1883 the county kept few records beyond land and business papers, its offices scattered around town. John Casbeer built the Donovan Mill on the creek after the flood. Sulphur Creek would flood Lampasas again in 1926, 1944, 1947 and 1957.

What the plaque says

Cook Cemetery This cemetery, Lampasas' oldest, was established as a pioneer community graveyard in the mid-1850s. The first marked burial here was that of Rebecca Hughes in 1854. The cemetery is named after Arkansas natives William M. and Cynthia Cook who moved to Texas about 1856 and bought the land containing this graveyard in 1861. No recorded burials occurred here after that of J. S. Brown (d. 1873), due, it is believed, to major flooding here in 1873. The cemetery has been altered by highway and business development. It was deeded to the Lampasas County Historical Commission in 1978.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Hancock Springs Park — 0.5 mi
  Lampasas's city park on Sulphur Creek, with a spring-fed swimming pool that holds about 69 degrees all year, the walls of the old bathhouse and a golf course.
• Colorado Bend State Park — 18 mi
  Old ranch country on the Colorado above Lake Buchanan, where a spring-fed creek drops 70 feet over fern-covered travertine at Gorman Falls.
• Inks Lake State Park — 25 mi
  A state park on a constant-level lake of the Colorado, between Buchanan and Inks dams, with pink granite and gneiss at the water and CCC work along Park Road 4.
• Inks Dam National Fish Hatchery — 26 mi
  A free federal hatchery below Inks Dam on the Colorado, with thirty production ponds that draw birds and a look at how fish are raised from egg to harvest.

More markers nearby

• The 1957 Flood — 0.3 mi
• First United Methodist Church of Lampasas — 0.4 mi
• Hancock Springs — 0.5 mi
• Hostess House — 0.5 mi