PRESERVING HISTORY

Monika Diaz reports

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DALLAS - A small monument will be unveiled Thursday to celebrate a man’s dedication to preserve a cemetery hidden in the hills of West Dallas.  

The ceremony will honor 80-year-old Henry Martinez, a Dallas resident, who has been fighting to save a cemetery in a neighborhood he grew up in.  

"There are still a lot of people who still don’t know where the cemetery is at all," Martinez said.

Martinez has kept an eye on the El Campo Santo de Cemento Grande de La Compania de Trinity Portland, or the Trinity Portland Cemetery Company, for over 40 years. The cemetery is located behind the AT&T building near Interstate 30 and Cockrell Hill. The site has sinking crosses, broken tombstones and rusty fences, but it holds 200 graves, including those of several of Martinez’s relatives.

“My mother is buried there," he said.

Martinez said his brother, sister, uncle and maybe other family members are also buried there. Martinez has been working to document the cemetery’s history. 

Many of the people buried there are Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants who helped build Dallas since the early 1900s. The El Cemento Grande neighborhood surrounded the Trinity Portland Company, and most of the families who worked there lived in the community.

As years go by, Martinez said it has become tougher to take care of the cemetery. While his sons have helped, he said he needs more volunteers and donations or he fears one of the few chapters of Dallas' Mexican American history could be lost after he is gone. 

“We are going to have to look for someone else to take my place,” he said. “I don’t want people to forget.”

The dedication ceremony is at 10 a.m. Thursday in the parking lot of Wal-Mart at Cockrell Hill and I-30 near Taco Cabana.  

For more information on donations or volunteers, contact Henry Martinez, Jr. at 214-845-1895. 

E-mail mdiaz@wfaa.com