Oak Hill Cemetery

One family buried here shows why so many came to Lampasas. James S. Gillett, a former adjutant general of Texas, came home from the Civil War broken in health, his landholdings in Austin and Grimes County unproductive. Because of his wife's illness the family moved to Lampasas in 1872, and he died there in April 1874; his grave carries a state marker. His son James Buchanan Gillett soon left for Menard, joined the Texas Rangers on June 1, 1875, and later wrote Six Years with the Texas Rangers (1921).

What the plaque says

Oak Hill Cemetery Hartwell Fountain sold ten acres of land to the City of Lampasas in 1872 to establish this cemetery. Originally known as City Cemetery, it was renamed Oak Hill Cemetery in 1908. The Ladies Cemetery Association, a group of concerned Lampasas women, maintained the cemetery from 1891 to 1948, when the city assumed responsibility. Among those buried here are local pioneers, prominent business people, veterans of wars including the Texas Revolution and the Civil War, and their descendants. (1992)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Hancock Springs Park — 1.3 mi
  Lampasas's city park on Sulphur Creek, with a spring-fed swimming pool that holds about 69 degrees all year, the walls of the old bathhouse and a golf course.
• Colorado Bend State Park — 17 mi
  Old ranch country on the Colorado above Lake Buchanan, where a spring-fed creek drops 70 feet over fern-covered travertine at Gorman Falls.
• Inks Lake State Park — 25 mi
  A state park on a constant-level lake of the Colorado, between Buchanan and Inks dams, with pink granite and gneiss at the water and CCC work along Park Road 4.
• Inks Dam National Fish Hatchery — 26 mi
  A free federal hatchery below Inks Dam on the Colorado, with thirty production ponds that draw birds and a look at how fish are raised from egg to harvest.

More markers nearby

• James Jackson Beeman — 0.2 mi
• Garrison Greenwood — 0.3 mi
• Walter P. Acker — 0.3 mi
• James S. Gillett — 0.3 mi