Shafter Lake

Texas · United States · Cemetery

The first county seat of Andrews County, Texas, wiped out by smallpox around the turn of the last century. The graves were moved. The lake comes and goes.

North of Andrews, Texas and west of Highway 385 is the original site of Shafter, the first county seat of Andrews County. It was named after a Union Army officer of the same surname.

The town was destroyed by a smallpox epidemic around the turn of the last century, probably some time before 1910. Smallpox in a small isolated town on the west Texas plains did not leave much behind it.

The cemetery where the victims were buried stood on the near edge of the small lake, which the accounts describe with a phrase worth keeping: it comes and goes as it pleases. Playa lakes on the Llano Estacado fill after rain and vanish in drought, and this one has been doing that for as long as anyone has been there to watch.

About ten years before the account was collected, the bodies were moved.

What remains is the site of a county seat that no longer exists, a lake that is not always there, and an empty burial ground that has already given up its dead once.

FAQ

Where is Shafter Lake located?

Shafter Lake is in Texas, United States.

Image: TexasExplorer98 / CC BY 2.0 via flickr