Fairview Cemetery

The town this cemetery served swung between drought and oil. Extended droughts and a depressed farm economy drove hundreds of county residents away in the late 1910s, and Midland fell to 1,795 people by 1920. The Permian Basin boom reversed the slide: by 1929 thirty-six oil companies had offices in town, streets were being lit and paved, and the twelve-story Hogan Building had gone up. That year the county sold its old courthouse for one dollar, a sale that landed in Ripley's Believe It or Not, and by 1930 Midland counted 5,484 people.

What the plaque says

Fairview Cemetery In use by May 31, 1885, 10-acre southeast corner of this tract was accepted as gift of Midland Town Co., by commissioners of newly organized Midland County in their first meeting on Aug. 10, 1885. Veterans of the Mexican War and Civil War are among the pioneers who are buried here. (1972)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Bush Family Home State Historic Site — 1.0 mi
  The small 1939 frame house on West Ohio Avenue where George and Barbara Bush raised their young family in Midland's 1950s oil boom, now a Texas Historical Commission site.
• Museum of the Southwest — 1.4 mi
  Midland's art and science museum in the 1937 house of oilman Fred Turner and his wife Juliette, with added galleries, a children's museum and a planetarium on the grounds.
• Permian Basin Petroleum Museum — 2.8 mi
  Midland's museum of the oil basin it sits on, from a restored diorama of the Permian reef to a 40-acre yard of drilling rigs and Jim Hall's Chaparral race cars.
• Midland Army Air Field Museum — 9.0 mi
  A hangar museum at Midland's airport, run by Commemorative Air Force volunteers, telling how a 1927 grass field became the bombardier college that graduated 6,627 officers in World War II.

More markers nearby

• W. B. Anglin — steps away
• First Christian Church of Midland — 0.8 mi
• George Bush Family Home — 1.0 mi
• Midland National Bank — 1.0 mi