Fabens residents making efforts to preserve cemetery
The township of Fabens has a population of close to 10,000 people.
It’s a small peaceful community, but for the dead not so much.
The cemetery is in a deserted lot.
If you look around the thrown out chairs and behind the paper bags, you can see several tombstones.
“We just came down one day and notice the tombstones on the floor,” said Fabens resident David Loya.
He says not many people know about the cemetery.
“It is in the middle of nowhere,” said Loya.
Loya says it’s a path used for other things.
“There is an off-road trail, motorcycles go through there, all kinds of vehicles go through there,” said Loya.
Use of the land has left many of the tombstones crushed, some unrecognizable.
Loya doesn’t blame the off-roaders:
“Some people don’t actually realize there’s a cemetery, they just go through it and don’t see the tombstones,” said Loya.
Loya feels there’s a significance of the grave site to Fabens.
“It’s history. We should preserve it,” said Loya.
Now there is a group of Fabenites trying to do just that.
They’ve set up a Facebook page called Fabens’ forgotten cemetery.
The goal is to gather up volunteers to help clean up the grave site.
Organizer Christy Bidwell said finding the property owners has been a task because over the past 100 years paperwork for the ownership and records have been lost.
Bidwell has also set up a donation page at Gofundme.com under Fabens Forgotten Cemetery.
They’ve raised over $2,000 so far.
Organizers say the money will be used for cleanup efforts
and to fix up the fence that’s fallen apart over time.
Loya said he’s glad someone’s making the effort to preserve the cemetery.
“A lot of people can go see it later on a pay their respects,” said Loya.
Organizers are scheduling a clean up April 5.
if you are interested in volunteering you can contact them on their Facebook page.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/FABENSCEMETERY/
Or if you’d like to donate funds you can do that at gofundme.com
http://www.gofundme.com/fabens-forgotten-cemetery
