Wooden Tombstone from the Las Cruces Masonic Cemetery
Las Cruces, New Mexico, ca. late 19th century
Pine | 33" H × 11" W × 1.5" D | Provenance: Gifted to Sally Kading

Carved from a single plank of aged pine, this weathered tombstone once marked a grave in the Las Cruces Masonic Cemetery, one of the oldest resting places in Doña Ana County. Before marble and granite were commonplace, families of the Mesilla Valley often shaped simple wooden markers to honor their dead — hand-cut, heartfelt, and vulnerable to time. This example, likely erected in the late 1800s, bears the soft curvature and worn silhouette typical of early frontier craftsmanship.

During the third quarter of the twentieth century, the marker was replaced with a cement tombstone as part of cemetery modernization. Yet this original board was not lost — it was preserved by Sally Kading, a dedicated preservationist and member of the Doña Ana County Historical Society, whose work documenting local cemeteries earned her the DAR Historic Preservation Medal. Her efforts, from recording forgotten graves to mapping lost burial sites with ground-penetrating radar, have safeguarded the memory of thousands who helped shape southern New Mexico.

This wooden tombstone now stands as a rare survivor — a relic of remembrance that connects two centuries of devotion. Its cracked grain and deep patina are not mere signs of age but testaments to endurance: the endurance of community, of love, and of the human need to remember. To hold it, or to behold it, is to touch both the fragility and persistence of memory itself.

A piece of New Mexico’s sacred landscape, this artifact educates by revealing the customs of early frontier mourning, engages through its human story of care and continuity, and enchants as a timeless emblem of the region’s soul — where history is never truly buried, only waiting to be rediscovered.

Please Note: Soup For Scale In Photo