Wooten Cemetery

The cemetery served a ranch community named for a canyon. By the 1890s the ranches near Telegraph included those of O. B. Fleming and Thomas C. Taylor, and a post office opened in 1900, with Taylor as postmaster from 1902. In the 1920s Telegraph drew campers, hunters and fishermen; in 1925 it had twenty-five residents, a tourist park, a gas station and a post office-general store. The estimated population held about steady for forty years, rose briefly to fifty-six in 1966, then fell to thirty-one in 1970, eleven in 1974 and three by 1990.

What the plaque says

Wooten Cemetery Typical of burial sites chosen by early Texas Hill Country pioneers, Wooten Cemetery was established by April 1880 when one-year-old Cornelius Clay Jackson was buried. His headstone is the earliest grave marker in the cemetery. His mother, P. Jane Jackson, died in 1881 and is interred nearby. Other notable graves include a family group believed to be tuberculosis victims. The plot of the Allsup family is also prominent, as is the grave of Civil War veteran Simon Lee Wooten (1830-1896), for whom the cemetery is named, who came to Texas from Georgia upon the death of the Old South. (1997)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Kimble County Historical Museum — 11 mi
  A free county museum in Junction, the town at the meeting of the North and South Llano, with the papers, photographs and tools of a ranching county.
• Devil's Sinkhole State Natural Area — 31 mi
  A 140-foot shaft into a cavern outside Rocksprings, seen only on guided tours from a platform at the rim as some three million bats spiral out on summer evenings.

More markers nearby

• Doom of the Outlaws of Pegleg Station — 1.3 mi
• R. M. Turner Family — 2.4 mi
• Telegraph Store and Post Office — 3.3 mi
• Site of Four Mile Dam — 7.4 mi