Oakwood: Austin's First City of the Dead

Austin's oldest cemetery is, in a way, a map of the city itself. Oakwood was set aside in 1839, the very year the capital was founded, and the hill north of the Capitol became the resting place of the pioneers who built the town — alongside an Alamo survivor, a historic Jewish burial ground, a Catholic cemetery, and the segregated Colored Grounds where many of East Austin's Black founders and church leaders lie. Walking these adjacent grounds is a way to read the whole social structure of early Austin, including the divisions the living carried with them into death. This tour moves with the dignity a cemetery deserves, pausing at the grave of the Messenger of the Alamo, at the segregated section that holds so much of Black Austin's history, and at the neighboring Jewish and Catholic grounds that share the same hill. It is a short, reflective walk through the layered memory of the capital's first city of the dead.