Hunt Japonica Cemetery

The cemetery's two names come from two post offices. Settlers moving up the Guadalupe from Kerrville took up farm and ranch land here in the late 1850s. The area's first post office, Japonica, opened three miles north of the forks in 1880 with C. Y. Davis as postmaster and served until 1918. In 1913 a second office opened at the junction of the North and South forks, named Hunt for R. F. Hunt, who owned the land under it. Since the 1920s most of the county's guest ranches and summer camps have stood within a few miles of Hunt.

What the plaque says

Hunt Japonica Cemetery The oldest legible tombstone in this cemetery is that of George T. Henry. It is dated 1872, sixteen years after the formal organization of Kerr county. The graveyard is located between the town of Hunt and the early community of Japonica. It has been used for the burial of many area pioneers and their descendants, and contains a large number of unmarked graves. Although inundated by floodwaters on several occasions, the Hunt Japonica cemetery remains in use as an important part of Kerr county's recorded history. (1988)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Schreiner Mansion — 13 mi
  The 1879 downtown home of Charles Schreiner, the Alsatian-born merchant, banker and rancher whose store and mohair trade built Kerrville.
• Lost Maples State Natural Area — 23 mi
  A canyon of the upper Sabinal where a relict stand of bigtooth maples turns color each autumn, a sight that drew crowds up a gravel road long before there was a park.
• Treue der Union Monument — 27 mi
  An 1866 German-language monument in Comfort over the graves of Hill Country Unionists killed at the Nueces in 1862, its flag of thirty-six stars kept at half-staff.
• Frontier Times Museum — 29 mi
  A museum built of fossils, petrified wood and cave formations in Bandera, holding a printer-historian's collection of frontier relics and oddities.

More markers nearby

• Education in Hunt — 0.7 mi
• Schumacher Crossing on the Guadalupe River — 1.6 mi
• Henderson Cemetery (Two miles north) — 5.3 mi
• The Dowdy Tragedy of 1878 — 5.3 mi