At South Dallas’ Oakland Cemetery,life after death has a new meaning amid a field of resilient post oak trees,wildflowers and long-stem prairie grasses.
Five years after a group of volunteers stepped in to save the cemetery from permanent closure, work has been underway to extend the lifespan of a site that’s home to scores of the city’s earliest residents and pioneers.
“We’re 47 acres of non-tax land in the middle of dallas,” said Monica Newbury, the cemetery’s chief administrator. “Creating a place that we can actually give back to the community once burials have slowed down and stopped is really crucial,” she said.
Their latest project takes people back to when someone visiting a grave over a century ago would have seen 2-inch-tall grasses such as little Bluestem, Sideoats Grama and Red Lovegrass, and wildflowers like Texas Bluebonnets.
Naturalists and the park’s caretakers are investing time and resources in restoring a 5-acre patch of Post Oak savannah and Blackland Prairie, remnants of an endangered ecosystem of tall grasses and wildflowers on which Dallas and its suburbs grew. Less than 1% of what used to be the Blackland prairie exists today.
Tombstones are illuminated in the morning light near the Oakland Prairie Project Nov. 25, 2025.
Azul sordo / Staff Photographer
The work, associated with a two-year pilot program called the Constellation of Living Memorials, could open the cemetery to new kinds of grants traditionally reserved for parkland and nature reserves. oakland Cemetery is one of five cemeteries that first joined the program to restore neglected cemeteries, and was inspired by Warren Ferris Cemetery’s resurgence as a wildlife refuge.
The more than 130-year-old cemetery, off Malcolm X Boulevard, is home to more than 27,000 graves. Its inhabitants mark chapters in the city’s history. From the graves of Confederate soldiers and former mayors such as Henry Ervay, whose names are memorialized in street names and signs all over the city, to families who lived in West Dallas and Little Mexico, the cemetery
A living, breathing cemetery
One November morning, Michael Puttonen, Martin and Rusty, the cemetery’s cherished protector, joined Newbury.
Puttonen,a North Texas master naturalist,surveyed a no-mow section that had been cordoned off in the back of the cemetery.
When the weather permits, tiny birds can be seen flocking to native plants, nibbling on seeds. Volunteers have also created the Oakland Memorial Meadow right next to it. It’s a 10,000-square-foot wildflower meadow. It’s dedicated to 300 victims of a meningitis epidemic that spread across the state between 1911 and 1913, whose individual unmarked graves are buried underneath.Newbury said nobody thought to lay headstones because they worried that if the ground broke for some reason, the disease could spread.
A Nodding Ladies’ Tresses orchid is seen at the Oakland Cemetery Nov. 25, 2025 in South dallas. Azul Sordo / Staff Photographer
“We’re still working on ideas,” Newbury said, “but we
Publication Date: 2025/12/29 01:02:14