The Rhodes Cemetery gate
Rhodes Cemetery is situated along the busy Pond Springs Road in north Austin. This stretch of road is largely populated by businesses these days and the amount of car
traffic that speeds by is testament of that. There is suitable shoulder along the road for a few cars to park right in front of the entrance gate.
The most visible feature of the cemetery is the impressive sign that sits over the entrance-way. It's made of metal and as you can tell from the picture is still in fine
shape. We have not found out when that sign was erected.
From the back of the cemetery looking to the entrance
When we first spotted Rhodes a few months back we had formed the opinion that it might be a great deal older than turns out to be true. The majority of the graves here
date within the last 50 years. However the location of Rhodes Cemetery is explained a bit better with the realization that its start was indeed early by local standards, with the earliest graves showing dates in 1907. There is no indication that earlier burials took place here and so far we have not identified any source of information that sheds light on when the cemetery was first used. A few tombstones were placed in the 1920's
and 1930's then most of the burials have taken place since the 1950's.
There are perhaps 100 graves in the cemetery, placed on either side of a dirt service road that runs down the middle of the cemetery to the back of the property. Some of the rows of graves have small concrete walkways that make navigating the higher grass easier. Although the grass was a little high and the weeds were growing abundantly it is apparent from the amount of flowers on graves that the plots are largely cared for and visited regularly. Certainly the more recent burials received the most attention.
The oldest headstones in Rhodes read 1907
One of the burials had taken place just a couple of months if not weeks before our visit. The original covering of soil had compacted and sunken slightly into the ground. Another layer of soil is probably due to be filled in shortly.
Some of the surnames that you can find at Rhodes include Baird, Buchanan, Carter, Cravatt, Cummings, Dunn, Ehrhardt, Fredrickson, Henry, Jackson, King, McGikvray,
Millegan, Moon, Moore, Muse, Prather, Prewitt, Salge, Sanders, Sparkman, Spears, Toungate and Walden. The Walden family appears to have been a big influence in the area as the surname is also found at the Davis Cemetery
Background information
and a complete grave listing
are available on the Cemeteries of
Williamson County home page.