Masonic Cemetery

The railroad men buried here came with the Texas and Pacific, which reached Howard County in 1881 and built a maintenance shop at Big Spring that gave the town a steady payroll. The town became a shipping point for livestock and produce and a supply point for country reaching from Lovington, New Mexico, to the Big Lake country and north to the ranches near Post and Lubbock. The railroad also hired J. B. D. Boydstun in 1881 to run an experiment farm; he tried cotton in 1883 and had to ship the first modest crop to Sweetwater for ginning.

What the plaque says

Masonic Cemetery Staked Plains Lodge No. 598, A.F. & A.M., was chartered by the Grand Lodge of Texas on December 12, 1884. The members soon recognized a need for a Masonic cemetery in Big Spring. In May 1885 George Bauer (1836-1898), a member of the Lodge, donated land at this site for that purpose. Adjacent land was given later for other community graveyards, which have become known collectively as Mount Olive Cemetery. The earliest documented grave in the Masonic Cemetery is that of William Howerton (1846-1886). At least one gravestone bears an earlier date, but it is for a grave which was reinterred here from another location. Among those buried here are many Masons and their families, including a number of community leaders; Texas and Pacific Railway Company employees; George Bauer, original donor of the property; and veterans of World War I, World War II, and Vietnam. Over the years, additional land acquisitions have enlarged the size of the cemetery to sixteen acres. A variety of sizes and styles of grave markers can be seen in the historic graveyard. (1990)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Hotel Settles — 1.2 mi
  Big Spring's fifteen-story hotel of 1930, built on ranch oil money, once the tallest building between Fort Worth and El Paso, empty and roosted in by pigeons for decades and now restored.
• Big Spring State Park — 3.0 mi
  A CCC drive looping up Scenic Mountain, a 200-foot bluff above the town that grew around the only dependable spring within sixty miles of open Llano country.
• Hangar 25 Air Museum — 4.0 mi
  A restored World War II hangar on the old air base above Big Spring, telling the story of the bombardier school of 1942 and of Webb Air Force Base, which trained pilots until 1977.

More markers nearby

• The J. & W. Fisher Company — 1.2 mi
• Howard County — 1.3 mi
• First National Bank in Big Spring — 1.3 mi
• First Christian Church of Big Spring — 1.6 mi