Happy Cemetery

The town took its name from Happy Draw, so called because cowboys were elated to find water there. Hugh Currie set up a homestead and post office beside the draw in 1891, and a stagecoach exchange station operated at the spot. When the Santa Fe built south from Canyon in 1906 it missed the settlement, so promoters laid out a new town by the tracks two miles west, where the Plains Lumber and Grain Company became the first business. By 1907 the post office had moved over. Happy still calls itself the town without a frown.

What the plaque says

Happy Cemetery The Happy Cemetery Association, organized on March 18, 1912. Purchased five acres of land for two adjacent cemeteries (one specifically for Catholics) from local businessman James F. White. The oldest recorded grave is that of William T. King (1871-1913). The association built a small frame house which was used as a gathering place for annual decoration day activities from1915 to 1985 when it was razed to make more room for plots. Numerous local pioneers and veterans are buried here, including both Confederate and Union Civil War veterans. (1991)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum — 17 mi
  The Panhandle's great collection, some two million objects behind a 1933 Art Deco hall carved with cattle brands, closed to the public since March 2025 over fire-safety violations.
• TEXAS Outdoor Musical — 18 mi
  A summer pageant of Panhandle settler life staged since 1966 in the Pioneer Amphitheater, built into a basin of Palo Duro Canyon below a 600-foot cliff.
• Lighthouse Trail — 19 mi
  The park's most walked trail, 2.8 miles each way across the canyon floor to the Lighthouse, a hoodoo of Triassic sandstone balanced on a pedestal of softer red shale.
• Buffalo Lake National Wildlife Refuge — 19 mi
  A 1938 Depression-era lake on Tierra Blanca Creek that has gone dry, now 7,664 acres of shortgrass, cottonwood canyon and a prairie dog town on the High Plains south of Umbarger.

More markers nearby

• Happy Public Schools — 0.8 mi
• Site of Old Happy — 1.2 mi
• Arney School — 14 mi
• C. Stuart Johnston — 15 mi