Senterfitt Cemetery

The town around this graveyard had its first school in 1873, paid for by public subscription and taught by Horace Deanman and Mary C. Shaw. A new schoolhouse went up in 1878 and served as church and community hall too, with a Masonic lodge in the upper story; a Reverend Pownsey was the first preacher and Frank McKean taught there. Nearby was a makeshift park with croquet courts and swings. P. C. Jackson started one of the first gins in 1880, and Harrison Bellew built a gin and mill.

What the plaque says

Senterfitt Cemetery Pioneer Reuben S. Senterfitt came to this area in the 1860s. A town named for him gradually built up and at its peak boasted hotels, mills, stores, saloons, a school, churches, a stage stop, and this cemetery. The town declined after it was bypassed by the railroad in the 1890s. The cemetery contains the graves of many early settlers. The oldest documented burial here is that of Joseph C. Howell, who died in 1877 at the age of three. Also interred in the graveyard are veterans of the Civil War, World War I, World War II, and Vietnam. (1988)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Colorado Bend State Park — 12 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.
• Hancock Springs Park — 18 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.

More markers nearby

• Site of Old Town of Senterfitt — 0.4 mi
• Phantom Hill Road — 1.3 mi
• Site of Lometa Reservoir — 2.7 mi
• Lometa — 3.0 mi