If a cemetery is going to have “park” in its name, “burial” is a refreshingly non-euphemistic adjective to go with it. Such as at Mission Burial Park, San Antonio, at least at the front entrance.
The place is also called Mission Burial Park South, because it is one of a number of cemeteries under the brand Mission Park, which is specific to San Antonio (where a lot of things are called “Mission”). The brand also includes local funeral homes and funeral chapels. I haven’t seen any of the other places, but South has to be the flagship and, in fact, it is very near both Mission San Jose and Mission San Juan Capistrano.
Replete with the kinds of names you’d expect in South Texas.
I knew a Zuehl in high school.
And maybe a name or two you wouldn’t expect. People get around.
A nice variety of sizes and angles when it comes to stones: one mark of an aesthetic cemetery. Even including flat stones. Just not too many.
That last one, Luby, has to be the restaurant family. Luby’s is owned by other investors these days. Once a sizeable chain, the company also owned other brands (for a while, Cheeseburger in Paradise). I had heard Luby’s was about to close all together a few years ago, but that didn’t happen, and there is still a fair residue of them in Texas. They’re probably not the cafeteria I remember from my youth, one of the mother’s go-to restaurants, but in the casual dining slot in our time.
Another notable South Texas family, the Steves.
They didn’t opt for a mausoleum, but others did.
What’s a mausoleum without stone Sphinx-like creatures guarding it?
An active cemetery still.
A particularly sad one, this.
We hadn’t planned to come to Mission Burial Park. After visiting Hot Wells, I fiddled with Google Maps and decided we needed to visit the nearby Espada Dam, an 18th-century relic of the Spanish presence in the area. Now part of the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park, “the dam diverted water from the San Antonio river and forced it into hand dug earthen ditches that carried the water to farms around the missions,” the NPS says. “Eventually emptying back into the San Antonio River [sic].”
The San Antonio River, which is the size of a largish creek in this part of Bexar County, flows near Hot Wells. Downstream maybe a half mile is the dam. But I made a wrong turn, and we found ourselves at the cemetery, which instantly looked intriguing.
The San Antonio River forms one boundary of the cemetery.
I think this is a back view of the dam from the cemetery.
Didn’t make it for a front view, which apparently can be seen from a small park across the river. Maybe next time. As for the excellent cemetery we got to see, that was another bit of serendipity on the road.