Joe Byrd

There is a small – 22 acre – cemetery in Huntsville that may be among the most exclusive in the state.  Everyone interred there died while incarcerated in the Texas Prison system.

Captain Joe Byrd Cemetery is around the corner from the Sam Houston State University campus, and a brand-new fraternity house is so close to the grounds that it might be mistaken for a visitor center.

Inmates are buried at Joe Byrd – and the State of Texas picks up the tab for the funeral - if relatives can’t be located, or for whatever reason choose not to claim the body.  About 450 prisoners die in TDCJ custody every year, and about 100 of them end up buried at Joe Byrd. 

Most funerals are held on Thursdays, except in the case of executions.  Those interments are held the following day so any family that was present can attend while they are still in town.

The graveyard was originally known as “Peckerwood Hill,” an inmate slang term referring to its indigent occupants. It was renamed for an assistant warden at the Walls Unit who in the 1960s initiated a cleanup of the neglected grounds.

Today, neat rows of grave markers—some flat stones, some crosses made of rebar-reinforced concrete—cover the gently sloping hill. The cemetery crew makes the markers onsite in a small shed. Some headstones include the inmate’s name and dates of birth and death. During the 1980s and ’90s the concrete crosses included only prison numbers and dates of death.

If the inmate was executed, the headstone bears the letters “X” or “EX,” or a prison number beginning “999”—the designation for death row.

You can read more about the cemetery Here.