Oakwood Cemetery

The cemetery changed shape after its first burials. In 1914 the city added an annex east of Comal Street, and that year the chapel designed by architect Charles Henry Page opened for memorial services. The grounds include sections historically set aside for Black, Latino and Jewish burials, while poor residents were laid in unmarked graves on the south side. Oakwood became a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1972 and joined the National Register in 1985, the annex in 2003, after decades of vandalism and decay that a mid-2010s restoration set out to reverse.

What the plaque says

Oakwood Cemetery In 1839, when Austin was being opened as a site favored for the capital of the Republic of Texas, a regular burial place was established in what is now the southwest part of Oakwood Cemetery. A decedent was buried on this hill at a spot to the right of Oakwood's present main entrance and northwest of the Hebrew ground within the enclosure. It was not until Sept. 1, 1856, however, that the land legally became city property. On that day the Legislature of Texas transferred the burial tract from the public lands to the corporate city of Austin. Across the decades, the name has changed: in 1866 it was "City Cemetery"; 1903, "Austin City Cemetery"; 1912, "Oakwood". Here lie the mortal remains of many pioneers and builders of Austin, and their successors: among them national and state personalities; cabinet members, governors and other high state officials, mayors, business and professional leaders, and solid citizens from all walks of life. The two Jewish sections of Oakwood have been given perpetual care by Temple Beth Israel since 1876. The Austin city government accepted responsibility for permanent care of Oakwood Cemetery in 1970. (1973)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• George Washington Carver Museum — 0.5 mi
  East Austin's museum of Black history and culture, grown from a segregated branch library moved across town in 1933, with a permanent exhibit on Juneteenth at its core.
• LBJ Presidential Library — 0.7 mi
  A ten-story travertine archive on the University of Texas campus holding 45 million pages from a presidency of civil rights laws, the War on Poverty and Vietnam.
• Texas State Cemetery — 0.7 mi
  A hill east of the Capitol that began with one general's grave in 1851 and now holds Stephen F. Austin, governors, Barbara Jordan and more than 2,000 Confederate veterans and widows.
• French Legation State Historic Site — 0.7 mi
  A raised pine house built in 1840 and 1841 for France's envoy to the Republic of Texas, who left Austin in a rage over a neighbor's pigs before it was finished.

More markers nearby

• George Washington Glasscock — steps away
• Gen. George W. Terrell — steps away
• Jacob Fontaine — steps away
• Major William Martin "Buck" Walton — steps away