Higgins Cemetery has served residents of the Higgins community since the late 1800s. Higgins was platted in 1887 on land owned by E.C. Gray, who purchased area property with his brother-in-law George Patton and Jim Patton in expectation that the Santa Fe Railroad would build through the area on its planned expansion to the Texas Panhandle. The railroad crossed Gray’s section, and Higgins grew into an agricultural, ranching, and oil community named for G.H. Higgins, a stockholder in the Santa Fe Railroad. Gray deeded this property as a cemetery in 1900, though residents had used it before then. The earliest marked graves are those of Ellen M. Patton and Howard F. Peugh, two children who died in 1889, and earlier unmarked burials may also be present. Those interred here also include Dr. Rudolf Goettsche, a pioneer dentist and county sheriff; Frank Ewing and George Sennett, friends of and early influences on Will Rogers; victims of the April 9, 1947 tornado that destroyed many of the town’s residences and its business district and claimed the lives of 45 townspeople; community leaders; early pioneers; and veterans of military conflicts dating to the Civil War. The cemetery features vertical stones, curbing, statuary, and grave slabs, and it remains in use today.