Spade Community Cemetery

The Handbook of Texas names the Hargrove, VanZandt, Crump and Falkner families among the early settlers and dates the Liberty school to 1899. The post office opened in 1902 as Herbert, for Colorado City postmaster Herbert Hazard, and took the Spade name in 1909. By 1910 Spade had a Baptist church and a Woodmen of the World lodge and was a stop on the Colorado City-Sterling City stage line. Its Fourth of July picnics and political rallies once drew James V. Allred. The school, with 101 pupils in 1930, joined Westbrook's in 1938.

What the plaque says

This cemetery began as a family graveyard on the farm of R.F. (1868-1927) and Addie (1872-1956) Hargrove, when their infant son died in April 1898. The Hargroves gave 2.5 acres of land surrounding their son's grave to the Spade Community for cemetery and school purposes. The community schoolhouse, originally called Liberty School, was used for numerous purposes, including funerals, grange meetings, church services, and community events. According to available oral history, the school building was located in the northeast corner of the cemetery property. The Ellwood-Renderbrook Spade Ranch, from which the community takes its name, adjoins the rural settlement on its southern boundary. From 1902 until 1912 a U.S. Post Office served the community; other businesses in the area included a cotton gin, a store, and a blacksmith shop. Since 1898 this graveyard has served as the sole burial ground for the farming and ranching community of Spade. Among the interments here are Hargrove family members; victims of the 1918 influenza epidemic; and veterans of the Civil War and World War II, including a member of the Women's Army Corps. (1992)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lake Colorado City State Park — 5.1 mi
  A mesquite-plains park on a lake built in 1949 to cool a power plant, southwest of Colorado City, where controlled burns are bringing back the grassland and 300 bird species pass through.
• Heart of West Texas Museum — 11 mi
  Colorado City's museum in a restored downtown house, from a mammoth dug up at Lake Champion in 2001 to an Ice Age bison and the wartime telegrams sent to a local family.

More markers nearby

• Site of Westbrook School and Church — 7.5 mi
• Seven Wells — 9.1 mi
• Col-Tex Refinery — 10 mi
• Texas & Pacific Railway — 10 mi