Texas Canyon Pioneer Cemetery

In 1895, seventeen-year-old William Walter Adams left Coleman County, Texas, to visit his older brother, Dave A. Adams, one of the first of the Adams family to settle in the Little Dragoon Mountains of Cochise County. Will soon decided to settle there as well and applied for a homestead grant on what would eventually become the Amerind Foundation property. Four more brothers, three sisters, and their mother soon joined them, and with so many Texans settling in the area, it came to be known as Texas Canyon. Will returned to Texas in 1905 to marry his sweetheart, Orphy (Ofelia) Burton, and after the wedding they returned to Arizona, where they had two daughters, Ethel and May, and three sons, Walter, Willard, and Wallace. When five-year-old Ethel died after being thrown from a horse, Will and Orphy buried her on the homestead, and on January 27, 1911, she became the first person laid to rest in what is now the Texas Canyon Pioneer Cemetery. Over the years, Will Adams urged community members to reserve burial sites on land he set aside for the cemetery. In June of 1939, May Clark, the Adamses' other daughter, sent out invitations for a cemetery work party and requested donations for fencing material. Donations came in, many helpers arrived to set the corner, fence, and gateposts, and although five-foot fencing was ordered, there was not enough cash left to pay for it, so Will paid ten dollars down on a payment plan from Sears Roebuck and Co. in Los Angeles and paid the remaining one hundred sixteen dollars in nine-dollar monthly installments. After Will Adams' death in 1959, Orphy sold the homestead and cemetery to William Shirley and Rose Fulton, founders of the Amerind. The Foundation now maintains the cemetery and its records. Burial reservations made during Will Adams' time are still honored, but no additional reservations can be made, and no one can be buried there unless their name appears on the pioneer list. An area behind the cemetery was also fenced as a Fulton family plot, where Mr. and Mrs. Fulton, their son and daughter, and other family members are buried.

Arizona · United States