bury me on the lone prairie

 

Some leave floral tributes but these young cowboys are honored with ropes.  Each June since about 1904 family members gather at Red Mud Cemetery for the annual cleaning.  The ropes appear recently and reverently placed.  Until 1990s there was also a tabernacle for "dinner on the grounds." In early times there were a number of large elm trees that provided shade. It was a real work morning, hoeing and repairing graves. A huge lunch followed, spread on makeshift tables. After lunch there would be a variety of entertainment; group singing, quartets, duets, and solos The elms trees are gone and a pole arbor replaces the building.  The first burial here, originally known as Tap Cemetery, was a homesteader who was shot over a horse in April 1886.  His wife died of tuberculosis a few months later and was buried beside on the home place..  Located about 11 miles southwest of Spur, one approaches the cemetery across a cattle guard and a few miles along a red dust road.  Good thing the weather was dry, or the road probably would have be "red mud" just like the so-named Little Red Mud Creek nearby.

 

Red Mud Cemetery

Dickens County, Texas

8.16.2014