Waldeck Cemetery

The Long Prairie name on this plaque had a life of its own. A post office called Long Prairie opened in 1860, and at the outbreak of the Civil War the Long Prairie German Company formed there as a Confederate reserve infantry company. The office closed in 1876 and reopened in 1881 as Waldeck, for Count Ludwig Joseph von Boos-Waldeck, who had bought the land in 1843 as agent for the Adelsverein, the German noblemen's emigration society. It closed in 1929. In the 1980s the Lower Colorado River Authority began mining lignite nearby for its Fayette County power plant.

What the plaque says

Waldeck Cemetery This cemetery has served the Waldeck community of German immigrants for over 100 years. Originally known as Long Prairie, the community met in 1866 to erect a school/church building and to establish a cemetery. Louis Tittel deeded six acres of land which became the cemetery. There were existing graves in the north corner, though the earliest marked grave is dated 1871. Burials include many German immigrants, and veterans of wars from the Civil War to the Vietnam War. This cemetery contains more than 530 graves, and continues to serve the Waldeck community. (1994)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Round Top and Festival Hill — 5.2 mi
  A German village on the old La Bahía Road, named for a house tower, with an 1867 stone church, a Fourth of July kept since 1851 and a concert hall a pianist built without blueprints.
• Texas Wendish Heritage Museum — 13 mi
  A museum at Serbin of the Wends, a Slavic people from Lusatia whose congregation of nearly 600 crossed on the Ben Nevis in 1854, losing seventy-three to cholera on the way.
• Monument Hill and Kreische Brewery State Historic Sites — 13 mi
  A shared tomb on the Colorado River bluff for the men of the Dawson fight and the black bean lottery, beside the ruins of a German stonemason's spring-fed brewery.
• Lake Somerville State Park and Trailway — 15 mi
  Two park units on an 11,000-acre lake between Austin and College Station, joined by a thirteen-mile trailway for hikers, cyclists and riders with primitive camps along the way.

More markers nearby

• Waldeck Evangelical Lutheran Church — 1.3 mi
• Gotcher Trace — 4.8 mi
• Schiege House — 5.0 mi
• Wandke House — 5.0 mi