A Baptist church settlement founded in 1900 formed the first community in this vicinity, and the area's ranch land began to be divided into lots about 1905. Early settlers called the community Double Gates because two gates stood on the road between Coleman and Brady, and a watering hole near the road also drew travelers. L.L. Shield built a general store and post office, and the community took his name. After the infant son of J.T. and L.A. (Dillingham) Gilbreath died in June 1908, he became the first person interred on land set aside for a community cemetery, and in December of that year one acre including the grave was donated to County Judge T.J. White, trustee. The cemetery gradually became known as Shields. Its earliest graves reflect the hardships of pioneer life: of the 37 people interred during the cemetery's first ten years, almost half were children younger than three, two more were teenagers, and four were under twenty-five. During that period, only one person older than fifty was buried there, Susan Winkler McGinnis Godwin, who died in 1913 at age eighty-two. Veterans of the Civil War, World War I, World War II, and the Korean War are buried there, and six graves in the cemetery's northwest corner are believed to be those of Catholic Mexican Americans. The Shield community prospered for a time, and many of its influential citizens were buried at this site, but although the community declined after World War II, Shields Cemetery endures as a record of its people.