Eighteen miles southeast of Hamlin, at the junction of US-180, sits Anson, named in honor of Dr. Anson Jones, the last president of the Republic of Texas. Anson was also a stop on the legendary Butterfield Stage U.S. Mail route that ran between St. Louis and San Francisco from 1858 to 1861, but these days it feels more like a stage set for The Last Picture Show, with handsome blocks of
brick-fronted buildings forming a square around the stately Jones County Courthouse at the center of town. Anson is still a center for the local cotton industry, but its main claim to fame is the Cowboys’ Christmas Ball, described in an 1890 poem by William Lawrence “Larry” Chittenden and recently reawakened by the involvement of country-folk singer Michael Martin Murphey,
who did a Christmas show there in 1995.
The story was covered by the television series Unsolved Mysteries several years ago. Many residents from Anson and the nearby town of Abilene have gone to witness these phenomenal lights. . The cemetery is located going towards the country. The lights are viewed by driving down the dirt farm road equivalent of about a half mile or more. As you drive closer to the cemetery towards the
lights they disappear.