Desdemona Cemetery

The Dukes buried here owned the land where the boom began. In September 1918 Tom Dees of the new Hog Creek Oil Company struck oil on Joe Duke's land, and speculators and workers poured in; the town's population may have reached 16,000. By 1919 the Desdemona field was probably the second largest in the oil belt, and Hog Creek Oil stockholders sold $100 shares for $10,250 each. Heavy rains then brought influenza and typhoid epidemics, and oil overflowed tanks and fouled streams. In April 1920 the Texas Rangers were called in to keep order.

What the plaque says

The town of Desdemona was a well established frontier community by the 1870s; a post office opened there in 1877. J. S. and Rosa Jones deeded one acre from the D. W. Funderburgh land survey for a "public graveyard" in 1880. The earliest marked grave is that of William E. Wright (1815-1878). It is likely that older unmarked burials exist among the oak trees here. Native rocks incised with initials or dates mark some early graves. Those buried here include pioneer settlers and their descendants; frontier matriarch Mrs. Kate (Kizzie) Shuler; veterans of the Civil War, World War I and World War II; Capt. A. J. O'Rear, a county commissioner and postmaster; S. E. Snodgrass, a physician who served the area for 50 years; local citizens who profited from the 1918 oil boom; Joe and Almeda Duke, owners of the site of the first oil gusher; and many young children. In 1918-19 oil discoveries surrounded the cemetery with flowing wells and oil derricks. H. H. Williams' estate donated two acres of land in 1965. The Desdemona Cemetery association manages and maintains the site. The cemetery continues to serve the area as it has for more than a century. (1996)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Old Rip at the Eastland County Courthouse — 18 mi
  A horned lizard in a glass-topped casket in the 1928 Eastland courthouse, the creature said to have come out alive from the old building's cornerstone after thirty-one years.
• Conrad Hilton Center and Mobley Hotel — 26 mi
  The 40-room oil-boom hotel in Cisco that Conrad Hilton bought in 1919 when a bank deal fell through, now a museum of the Hilton start and of Cisco's 1927 Santa Claus bank robbery.

More markers nearby

• Fort Blair, C.S.A. — 0.5 mi
• Desdemona First Baptist Church — 0.8 mi
• Site of Blackwell Hospital — 7.8 mi
• Old Shinoak Springs — 9.1 mi