Walthall Cemetery

Walthall began about 1875 as a telegraph station. According to the Handbook of Texas, William Hightower set it up on a new line running from Camp Colorado to Fort Concho, and a stop for the Dallas-Fort Concho stage was added soon after. Hightower was also first postmaster when the post office opened in 1877. The post office closed in 1881, and no sign of the community appeared on 1980 county maps. The Handbook places the town five miles southeast of Ballinger. The cemetery is on private land, and this description gives no route to it.

What the plaque says

Walthall Cemetery This burial ground is the last surviving evidence of Walthall community. Situated west of here, just across the Colorado River, Walthall was the first stable settlement in Runnels County. It was located on land claimed in the 1860s by the John W. Guest family, and surrounded a stagecoach stop on the Camp Colorado - Fort Concho Road in the 1870s. The cemetery contains at least one unmarked grave. The oldest marked grave is that of infant Penny Cotten (1877-1878). Mrs. John W. Guest (1820-1878) was another early burial. A stone from the river marks her grave. (1976)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Carnegie Library of Ballinger — 4.7 mi
  A 1909 limestone library with an Ionic portico in a railroad town the Santa Fe created in 1886, one of the few Texas Carnegie libraries still working in its original building.
• Z. I. Hale Museum and Rock Hotel — 19 mi
  A free museum in a Winters optometrist's office, a 1909 railroad hotel and a 1927 implement dealership, with Rogers Hornsby's hometown memorabilia and a 1912 horse-drawn cotton picker.
• Fort Chadbourne — 32 mi
  An 1852 infantry post and Butterfield stage station on a Coke County ranch, its fallen stone buildings rebuilt since 1999 by the descendant of the family that has ranched the land since 1877.

More markers nearby

• The Rev. Thomas Wadlington Cotten — steps away
• San Clemente Mission — 4.0 mi
• Colorado River Ferry Crossing — 4.1 mi
• Site of Pickettville — 4.3 mi