The Estacado Cemetery is the last vestige of the 19th century community of Estacado that was once the seat of Crosby County.
The easiest way to get here is to go US62 East from Lubbock, then turn L onto Lubbock CR 3900. Make a R on a dirt road to the cemetery (look for tall juniper trees). If you get to FM 1527 you have gone too far.
Of course, this was NOT the way Blasterz went - but we got to see nice vineyards, a pheasant, some prairie dogs, and about a million Sandhill Cranes as we circled the cemetery on dirt roads.
The day Blasterz visited, we estimated there are about 250 people buried here.
Of note, several pioneer graves and the rare grave on a UNION Veteran of the Civil War.
The state historical marker at the cemetery reads as follows:
"ESTACADO CEMETERY
In 1878 Paris Cox (1846-1888), an Indiana Quaker, visited this area with a group of buffalo hunters. Attracted by the abundance of cheap farm land, he returned to Indiana and began advertising his plans for a Quaker colony here. Although the first colonists who arrived in 1879 were discouraged by a severe winter, other settlers, including those of various religious beliefs, soon moved to the area. The settlement was first called Maryetta in honor of Cox's wife, but in 1886 it was renamed Estacado, part of the Spanish term for the Staked Plains, Llano Estacado.
When Crosby County was formally organized in 1886, Estacado was chosen as the first county seat. A courthouse was built two years later. The center of a vast agricultural area, Estacado continued to prosper until the 1890s when the county seat was moved to Emma and many of the early colonists began migrating to other areas.
An important reminder of Estacado's pioneers is this community cemetery, the burial site of many early settlers and area leaders, including Paris Cox. Now part of Lubbock County, it serves as a historic record of the individuals who opened the Texas Plains and led in the region's agricultural development.
(1982)"
From the Handbook of Texas Online: (
visit link)
"ESTACADO, TX.Estacado, the first White agricultural settlement on the South Plains, is on Farm Road 1527 on the Crosby county line in northeast Lubbock County. It was established by Paris Cox in 1879. Looking for a suitable location to establish a Quaker colony, Cox had secured railroad land in western Crosby and eastern Lubbock counties in the late 1870s in exchange for his sawmill business in Indiana. In the fall of 1879 the first families (Cox, Stubbs, Spray, and Hayworth) arrived in the area in time to face a severe winter. Cox built a sod house for his family, but the other settlers spent the ordeal in tents and quit the colony the following spring, leaving only the Cox family in residence. After a successful crop was achieved, however, interest in the colony was renewed, and by 1882 ten families had been recruited. The community was named Marietta (or Maryetta) for Cox's wife Mary, but was renamed Estacado, from Llano Estacado, when the post office was established in 1884 with William Hunt as postmaster.
In 1886 Estacado became the county seat of Crosby County. The community provided some of the first organized education on the South Plains when Emma Hunt began teaching in a dugout classroom in 1882; by 1884 classes were being held in the Quaker meetinghouse. The Central Plains Academy, the first college on the Llano Estacado, was established in the community in 1890 and operated for two years. The town flourished for some years, and by 1890 the population was reported at 200. But in 1891 Emma became the county seat and Estacado began to decline. The town lacked leadership after Cox's death in 1888, and a grasshopper invasion and drought in 1892–93 all but finished it.
Favorable growing conditions attracted settlers to the region after 1900, however, and Estacado continued to exist, although the original Quaker colony had dissolved. The post office was closed in 1918, after which mail came through Petersburg. The population increased from sixty-eight in 1930 to eighty-five in 1940; it remained stable at eighty from 1970 through 2000. In the mid-1980s the town had a cotton gin and a few scattered residences."