Llano’s Scenic City of the Dead
The first site to be designated a Texas Historic Cemetery keeps memories evergreen
Wednesday, the 9th of November, 1921, was an ordinary day for retired judge and former Texas Lieutenant Governor James Nathan Browning of Amarillo, aged 71. Perhaps he spent a few moments musing over his long-ago cattle-raising years at Fort Griffin, or reminiscing about the dark nights when he read for the law by the light of a pine knot on the frontier. Maybe he thought of his term in the state legislature, or the son he’d lost a while back to a riding accident.
He did, on that day, drop the charter he’d just drafted for the nonprofit Llano Cemetery Association into the mail. He then stopped by the Elks Club for a game of chess, returned home, and died.
The post to Austin must have moved swiftly, for just three days later — on the very day the judge was laid to rest in the cemetery he helped create — the state granted the association’s charter.
Texas’s first Historic Cemetery
Visitors today to Amarillo’s Llano Cemetery, the first site in Texas to be designated a Texas Historic Cemetery (1987), can pay respects at the judge’s grave. Or at the final resting places of Medal of Honor recipient Lance Corporal Thomas Elbert Creek, “Amarillo by Morning” songwriter Terry Stafford, and commander of the ill-fated Space Shuttle Columbia, Rick Husband, among thousands of others.
“Historic Llano Cemetery is more than just a cemetery, more than just a statistical recording of burials and more than just a repository for the dead,” says Mark Blankenship, executive director of Llano Cemetery. “It’s very much alive with the memories of people and families who helped shape Amarillo, the Republic of Texas, and our nation.”
HONORIFIC Established in 1888 as Amarillo’s first burying ground, Llano Cemetery holds special recognitions annually for deceased public servants. These occasions include Wreaths Across America, Memorial Day, the Avenue of Flags, and a Law Enforcement Wreath Laying Ceremony.
Historic Twilight Tour each October
Bringing the stories of the deceased to life is the purpose of a special autumn event at the cemetery. The Historic Twilight Tour focuses on the founders, pioneers and legends of the Panhandle. Guests are invited to stroll the cemetery’s scenic acres with the aid of an app, or join in a docent- guided hayride.
On the windswept plains, the cemetery’s 150 developed acres feature thousands of trees and shrubs, including Austrian pine, Chinese pistache, varieties of evergreens, junipers, cedar elms, Allée Elms, desert willows and lacebark. Five wells on the site have the capacity to disperse 250,000 gallons of water per day. These improvements and landscaping had their roots in New Deal programs of the 1930s, but visitors enjoy the grounds today for picnics, walking, jogging and biking, as well as reflection and prayer.
Divided into numerous lawns and gardens, such as the Garden of the Four Chaplains, the Garden of Angels and the Field of Honor, the cemetery invites visitors to appreciate its natural settings and plantings as well as its monuments and structures such as the Pantheon (with the nation’s first underground mausoleum) and a historic caretakers’ cottage.
AUTUMN REMEMBRANCE The annual Twilight Tour began as a partnership between Llano Cemetery and the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum.
A monument to the pioneers
Some 7,000 veterans are buried at Llano Cemetery. Older sections were designed for infants, and for ethnic or religious groups. In section 66, victims of the 1917-19 influenza epidemic were swiftly buried in long trenches.
Listed in the National Register of Historic Places since 1992, the cemetery today is a place of beauty, heritage and memory. “What was simply a place to bury the dead,” reads the National Register documentation, “became a park as well and thus a living monument to the pioneers of Amarillo.”
