Driftwood Cemetery

Driftwood, once known as Liberty Hill, had settlers as early as 1850, but most arrived in the early 1880s, perhaps drawn by the new rail terminals at Kyle and Buda. The town grew up as a supply center for nearby ranches and farms, and by 1890 it had a post office, a school, churches, a cotton gin and a general store. Its population sank to ten in 1925, climbed to nearly 100 in the middle of the century and dwindled below twenty-five by the 1970s. In 1990 twenty-one people lived there.

What the plaque says

Driftwood Cemetery This cemetery traces its origin to the building of a sanctuary by the Driftwood Methodist Episcopal church, South, here in 1884. The sanctuary was built on two acres of land acquired by the congregation from David L. and Mattie Elizabeth Dorrah. This cemetery was established on a portion of the churchyard immediately south of the sanctuary later that year. It replaced another cemetery established in the 1870s about one mile north of this site known as the Old Community Cemetery. Several of the burials in the old graveyard, including those of many early settlers of this are, were removed and reinterred in the newly established Driftwood Cemetery. Among the persons buried here are the following trustees of the Driftwood Methodist Church who helped establish the cemetery: James Thomas Eckols, Sr. (1841-1911); Thomas Martin (1821-1901; and the Rev. John Alexander Garrison (1849-1933), a prominent Methodist circuit preacher. The cemetery, which reflects the heritage of this area, contains the grave sites of community and church leaders and at least eight veterans of the American Civil War. The cemetery continues in use and is cared for by the Driftwood Cemetery Association. (1993)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Spring Lake and the Meadows Center — 17 mi
  The headsprings of the San Marcos River, among the longest-inhabited places in North America, once an amusement park with a swimming pig and now seen from glass-bottom boats.
• Pedernales Falls State Park — 18 mi
  The Pedernales stepping down over layered limestone east of Johnson City, a river that can turn from a placid stream to a torrent in minutes.
• Barton Springs Pool — 18 mi
  A three-acre pool in the bed of Barton Creek, fed by the fourth-largest spring in Texas at 68 to 70 degrees, and shared with an endangered salamander found almost nowhere else.
• McKinney Falls State Park — 19 mi
  Limestone falls on Onion Creek inside Austin, where people camped under a rock overhang for thousands of years and a financier of the Texas Revolution built his stone ranch house.

More markers nearby

• First Baptist Church of Dripping Springs — 5.8 mi
• Dripping Springs United Methodist Church — 6.6 mi
• The Century-Old Wimberley Cemetery — 9.3 mi
• John Henry Saunders Homestead — 9.5 mi