Quail Cemetery

Quail was named for the birds once abundant around it. The first families here were those of the brothers W. I. and T. S. Atkinson, who built dugout homesteads in November 1890 and became the first to grow cotton in the county. A post office opened in 1902, and in 1904 Greer Powell started a cotton gin, the first store opened and a telephone wire strung along a barbed-wire fence connected Quail with Wellington. Wade Arnold began the Quail Feather in 1910. The town had 300 people in 1930 and thirty-three in 2000.

What the plaque says

Quail Cemetery Among the earliest settlers of this area were J.E. & Mary Jane Blevins and their children. Arriving in 1902, they were soon involved in the organization of a community school, post office, and church. J.E. & Mary Jane Blevins donated land for each of those endeavors, as well as for a community cemetery. The Quail Cemetery was created in 1904, shortly after the death of the Blevins' infant son. The grieving parents donated land for a cemetery, and their son was the first to be buried here. There was no fence around the burial ground. Townspeople chose grave sites in which to bury members of their families. Though most graves are marked, some have plain stones, and the cemetery does contain some unmarked graves. Many of the burials are those of infants and young children, a testament to the hardships of life and rudimentary medical care in early Collingsworth County. Area pioneers buried in the Quail Cemetery include: J.E. Blevins (1860-1956), Mary Jane Blevins (1868-1926), Lydia Rose Atkinson (d. 1908), W.M. Barton (d. 1932), Lee Jeffres (d. 1932), W.I. Atkinson (d. 1940), J.A. White (d. 1915). Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Tower Station and U-Drop Inn — 23 mi
  Shamrock's 1936 Conoco station and cafe at the corner of Route 66 and US-83, sketched in the dirt with a nail, named by a schoolboy and saved by the town.
• Devil's Rope and Old Route 66 Museum — 24 mi
  Barbed wire and the Texas road in McLean's old brassiere factory: the fence that closed the open range, from the salesmen who sold it to the Panhandle ranches it divided.
• Phillips 66 Station, McLean — 24 mi
  A 1929 cottage-style Phillips 66 station on First Street in McLean, the town I-40 went around last and whose Route 66 business district stayed much as it was.

More markers nearby

• The Red River Plunge of Bonnie and Clyde — 10 mi
• Rocking Chair "Ranche" (1883-1893) — 10 mi
• Site of Dozier Schoolhouse — 11 mi
• Collingsworth County — 11 mi