Historical Marker
Llano Cemetery
Randall County · Texas
Erected 1987
The first burials here came while Amarillo itself was brand new. J. T. Berry had platted the town in April 1887 beside a playa known as Amarillo, or Wild Horse, Lake, and it was first called Oneida. The Amarillo Champion, its first weekly, began on May 17, 1888, the first child born in town arrived that June, and town lots were sold at public auction for $50 to $100. The cemetery and its Pueblo-style buildings were listed on the National Register of Historic Places as a historic district on May 21, 1992.
What the plaque says
Llano Cemetery Land for this cemetery was given by T. B. and Hattie M. Clisbee in 1891, although a number of burials had already taken place by that time. The earliest known burial, that of Lillian Morrow, occurred in 1888. According to local legend, she was a child interred here by her westward-traveling family. A cemetery association, which was formed about 1901, was chartered in 1921. Llano Cemetery has served as a regional burial ground for Panhandle residents. A mausoleum, The Llano Pancheon, was built in 1929 with widespread community support. (1987)
Where it stands
35.18264, -101.83100 · Directions
Worth the stop nearby
- Route 66 Sixth Street Historic District — 2.8 miThirteen blocks of Amarillo's streetcar suburb that Route 66 turned into a roadside strip, from the 1922 Nat to Texaco, Phillips and Dutch Mill stations, now shops and bars.
- Helium Centennial Time Columns Monument — 4.8 miFour sealed time capsules raised in Amarillo in 1968 for helium's centennial, in the city that for years produced almost all the world's commercial helium from the Cliffside field.
- Cadillac Ranch — 8.8 miTen Cadillacs from 1949 to 1963 planted nose down in a pasture west of Amarillo by the Ant Farm collective in 1974, on private land where visitors are let in to paint them.
- Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum — 15 miThe 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.