Leakey Cemetery

Leakey sits on the Frio River just below the meeting of its branches. The river is formed by the East, West and Dry Frio and runs 200 miles southeast across Uvalde and Frio counties and three more to the Nueces, a mile south of Three Rivers, draining 7,310 square miles on the way. Frio is Spanish for cold, and the river has been identified as the one Alonso De Leon called the Rio Sarco in 1689. Below Leakey it passes Concan and Knippa, and it is dammed to form Choke Canyon Reservoir and a string of smaller lakes.

What the plaque says

Leakey Cemetery Originally known as the Floral Cemetery and serving an earlier community by that name, this cemetery dates to at least 1881. Land for the graveyard was sold by John and Nancy Leakey for one dollar and a cemetery plot. The oldest documented burials here are those of Sara Catherine McLaurin (b. 1849) and fifteen-year-old Allen Lease, who were killed on April 19, 1881, in the last Indian raid in the Frio Canyon area. The next interment was that of Civil War Veteran John Colter Brice, who died April 30, 1881. The only public cemetery in the Leakey vicinity, this graveyard contains the burials of many of the area's early settlers. Gravestones attest to the hardships of life in the 19th and early 20th centuries and the epidemics of measles, typhoid fever, diphtheria, and influenza which claimed many lives. There are over 900 documented burials here, as well as a number of unmarked graves. Those interred in the Leakey Cemetery include pioneers, children, elected officials of Real and Edwards counties, community leaders and veterans. The founder of the town, John Leakey, and his wife Nancy are both buried here. (1988)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Real County Historical Museum — 0.2 mi
  A small county museum in Leakey, at the head of the Frio Canyon, with a log-cabin parlor, an 1880s horse-drawn hearse, a wool and mohair shearing machine and 1910s jail cells.
• Garner State Park — 8.7 mi
  The Frio River park that Uvalde County built with the Civilian Conservation Corps and named for its own vice president, where people have danced on the stone pavilion every summer since the 1940s.
• Devil's Sinkhole State Natural Area — 34 mi
  A 140-foot shaft into a cavern outside Rocksprings, seen only on guided tours from a platform at the rim as some three million bats spiral out on summer evenings.

More markers nearby

• Catherine McLauren — steps away
• Real County — steps away
• Real County — steps away
• John Leakey — steps away