Oak Cliff Cemetery

Hord's Ridge became Oak Cliff in 1887, when Thomas Marsalis and John Armstrong bought several hundred acres, the Handbook of Texas says. They sold the place as an elite suburb, and Marsalis built a steam railway into Dallas and a resort hotel modeled on one in San Diego. The 1893 depression ended the dream and sent him into bankruptcy. Oak Cliff incorporated in 1890 and voted for annexation by Dallas in 1903 by a margin of eighteen votes, after attempts dating from 1900.

What the plaque says

Oak Cliff Cemetery Kentucky native William S. Beaty came to Texas during its early days as a Republic and received a grant of 640 acres of land. He and his brother, Josiah, who arrived in 1836, settled along the Trinity River in what is now Dallas County. The settlement that developed around their property first was called Hord's Ridge and became known as Oak Cliff in 1887. In 1846, William Beaty deeded 10 acres of his land for a public burial ground and indicated in the deed that his brother, Josiah, already had been interred on the site. The deed also specified that the cemetery should be subject to no one sect but should forever remain open to all. The oldest marked grave in the cemetery, that of Martha A. Wright, is dated 1844. Many prominent Dallas County pioneers and citizens have been buried here, including Judge William Hord, for whom Hord's Ridge was named. Two former Dallas mayors, George Sergeant and George Sprague, and a son of Gen. Sam Houston, Col. William Rogers Houston, are buried here. Oak Cliff Cemetery remains a valuable and historic link to the early settlement of Dallas. (1985)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Dallas Heritage Village at Old City Park — 1.9 mi
  Dallas's first city park, laid out around Browder's Spring in 1876, now a museum of historic buildings moved here from across North Texas, among them Millermore, a cotton planter's mansion.
• The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza — 2.0 mi
  A plow-company warehouse of 1903, identified by the Warren Commission as the building Oswald fired from, now a museum on its sixth and seventh floors above Dealey Plaza.
• Dallas Museum of Art — 2.5 mi
  A city art museum that began as the Dallas Art Association in 1903, grew up in Fair Park, and has stood in the Arts District since 1984 under a forty-foot barrel vault.
• African American Museum, Dallas — 3.1 mi
  Founded in 1974 at Bishop College, a free Fair Park museum holding the Sepia photograph archive, African art and A. Maceo Smith's papers, and the story of the Hall of Negro Life.

More markers nearby

• Tenth Street Historic District Freedmans Town — steps away
• Colonel William G. Cooke — 0.7 mi
• Officer J.D. Tippit — 0.8 mi
• Dallas Zoo — 1.0 mi