Houston Pet Cemetery
Congratulations to jls163 for the FTF!
This cache is located across the street from where there was a pet cemetery from 1938 to 2002.
Houston Pet Cemetery was created in 1938 by Houston William P. Landfield, owner of Landsfield’s Advertising and Printing Company. Landsfield had thought on the idea of a Houston-area pet cemetery for several years before buying twenty acres of bald prairie land twenty-two miles from downtown Houston to locate the cemetery.
"We have been working on this proposition for several years," said Mr. Landfield. "Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and a number of other large cities have cemeteries and funeral directors for pets. We believe such a project for Houston is needed and will be successful. We think that when people think enough of their pets to send them to a hospital, they think enough of them to wish to give them a decent burial.”
The location of the cemetery was on Cook Road about one mile north of Old Richmond Road (now Bissonnet Street). An aerial photograph from 1944 shows the property surrounded by prairie farmland. The offices were located at 413½ Fannin Street in Houston.
By 1948, there were more than 300 graves and by 1954 there were over 700. The cemetery had a menagerie of pets buried on its premises. Most of the graves are for dogs, but the first animal buried there was a cat, but there were plenty of other family pets such as cats, rabbits, parakeets, parrots and turtles. There were at least four horses interred, and a monkey named Chimgo who died July 15, 1944.
Landfield sold Houston Pet Cemetery to another Houston businessman, Harry Birkelbach in 1965. Birkelbach’s daughter Joyce Serant was also an owner-manager of the cemetery.
By December 1981, The Houston Chronicle reported there were an estimated 2,500 animals buried in the cemetery.
At least two police dogs were buried in Houston Pet Cemetery.
On Monday August 26, 1974, Houston PD Patrolman L.F. Yeoman stopped a car and one of the occupants opened fire with a shotgun. Yeoman returned fire and when shooting was done, K-9 Cop German Shepard Art was found dead in the police car. No autopsy was performed at that time, and it was assumed that Art died from shotgun pellets fired by the occupants of the stopped car. However, at trial it was ordered that Art’s body be exhumed for an autopsy, and then it was determined that three-year-old Art died from a .45 from Patrolman Yoeman’s handgun.
Drug sniffing K-9 officer Romel had a much more storied career. Romel’s partner, police officer Chuck Brawner, estimated that Romel sniffed out more than $2 million worth of drugs in his career, some of that while walking the halls of junior and senior high schools in Spring Branch school district. Romel once helped Brawner subdue a drunk driving suspect who resisted arrest. Romel even had an assignment watching over John Travolta when he was in town filming Urban Cowboy. Romel retired in 1981 and on July 1, 1985 he was put to sleep due to his declining health and buried in Houston Pet Cemetery the following day.
Houston Pet Cemetery probably never made much money, but urban sprawl began to make the economics of running a for-profit pet cemetery even harder. In 1974, Alief School District tax rolls listed the value of the cemetery at $107,010. Today that same property has a value of nearly $900,000.
Houston Pet Cemetery was advertised for sale in 1975, but Joyce Serant was still managing it in 1984. In 2002, Texas Pet Cemeteries, Inc. sold the property. Aerial photographs show that sometime between February 2004 and May 2005 the property being converted for use as a private business.
It is assumed that none of the pet graves were removed before the property was converted into what seems to be a vehicle storage lot.
Source: Multiple articles from The Houston Post and the Houston Chronicle, Google Earth, and Harris County Appraisal District web page.