Geocaching takes you to places that you might not ever visit, which is one of the things I like about it. Yesterday, my father and I found a cache hidden in McCombs Cemetery (N 33° 01.728 W 097° 02.192).
The McCombs Cemetery dedicated perhaps as early as 1855--one year before Denton was selected as county seat---is among the oldest in Denton County. The individuals interred are early settlers who are highly representative of the pioneer history of Denton County. Groups of rugged individuals made their way in ox-drawn wagons from Tennessee to Texas and settled on adjoining land for protection from Indians and marauders. Some infants and young men and women died from the elements and likely disease. There were early widows who buried their loved ones on farmland, gave birth to first generation Texans and remained to work the land far from the life they had known.In 1993, developers bulldozed the cemetery while local neighborhood activists were in the early stages of trying to protect it. The headstone of an infant left the only reaming visible evidence of the cemetery after the destruction. With the help of archaeologists, the local citizens were able to prove that the ground was a cemetery and were able to halt further destruction. In 1997, The State of Texas recognized the site as a historical landmark.
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Denton County TX
Lewisville TX
Geocaching
2 comments:
What's the bottom picture of?
After the bulldozer, these headstones were all that survived; these are arranged in a semi-circle. The stone in the center is a commemorative headstone, placed to honor all the 100+ dead, buried in McCombs cemetery.
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