Cypress Creek Cemetery

The tornado that struck Rocksprings on the evening of April 12, 1927, did not stop there. Moving southeast, it stayed on the ground for about 65 miles. Past Rocksprings it skipped east into Real County, and near Leakey, still about a fifth of a mile wide, it killed two people and injured five before it lifted. The tornado historian Thomas P. Grazulis rated it F5, the top of the Fujita scale. Seventy years later the Jarrell tornado of 1997 became the most recent storm in Texas to carry that rating.

What the plaque says

Cypress Creek Cemetery Established in the 1870s, Cypress Creek Cemetery served a scattered community of pioneers along Cypress Creek in what was then Bandera County before the founding of nearby Leakey in Edwards County. The land on this site belonged to settler John Bunyan Stidham, Sr., whose son, John Bunyan Stidham, Jr., gave land for a school nearby. Legend surrounds this graveyard. The earliest grave in the cemetery is believed to be that of four-year-old James Beauford Bybee (1875-1879). His burial site is marked by two flat rocks in the ground according to Bybee family practice. Records indicate that the second burial is that of Polly A. Smart (1847-1881). Also buried here is Laura (Turner) Stidham, wife of John Bunyan Stidham, Jr. She and their son Alonzo (b. 1877) were killed when a tornado destroyed their home in 1927. They were buried in a common grave marked only with stones. The graves of several infants and children bear witness to the harsh conditions of pioneer life. Ten known veterans of U. S. and foreign conflicts are interred here. The cemetery contains more than 75 marked and many unmarked graves. Still in use in 1998, Cypress Creek Cemetery continues to serve the descendants of the pioneer settlers of Real County. (1998)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Real County Historical Museum — 7.6 mi
  A small county museum in Leakey, at the head of the Frio Canyon, with a log-cabin parlor, an 1880s horse-drawn hearse, a wool and mohair shearing machine and 1910s jail cells.
• Garner State Park — 15 mi
  The Frio River park that Uvalde County built with the Civilian Conservation Corps and named for its own vice president, where people have danced on the stone pavilion every summer since the 1940s.

More markers nearby

• Leakey School — 7.4 mi
• John Leakey — 7.7 mi
• Real County — 7.7 mi
• Real County — 7.7 mi