Texas State Cemetery

The Texas State Cemetery began with one grave. Edward Burleson, a general of the Revolution and vice president of the Republic, died in Austin on December 26, 1851, and was given a Masonic burial on this ground east of the Capitol; the state bought the land in his honor in 1854. During the Civil War, Confederate officers killed in battle were buried here, and because the Confederate men's and women's homes were in Austin, more than 2,000 veterans and widows followed, most after 1889. Of the Union veterans once buried here, only Antonio Briones remains, alone in the northeast corner at his family's request.

Stephen F. Austin was moved here from Peach Point in Brazoria County in October 1910. The historian Louis Kemp pushed the reburial of many early Texans in time for the 1936 Centennial, and the road he had paved through the grounds is still a state highway, State Highway 165. The smaller section now holds about 900 graves of prominent Texans: governors including John Connally and Ann Richards, the congresswoman Barbara Jordan, José Antonio Navarro, Southwest Airlines founder Herb Kelleher, and a cenotaph for the novelist James Michener. State law limits burial to officials and people a committee finds made a significant contribution to Texas.

By the early 1990s the grounds had decayed and were unsafe to visit. Lieutenant Governor Bob Bullock started a three-year renovation in 1994 that added a visitor center, and the cemetery was rededicated in 1997. It is a working cemetery, so visit quietly.