06/27/2025
Sanger Forgotten Cemetery – Duck Creek Cemetery
MPact Missions originated in Saint Jo, Texas by Mark McBride who began his ministry of doing for the community and leading their young people to learn fellowship, hard work, ethics, and reaching out to those that need assistance. This is their 29th year which each year being held in a different city with Denton County the focus in 2025 and headquartered in Ponder. This year the group completed 80 plus projects with ramps being built, land cleared, as well as many projects helping people that are not able to do things.
The Sanger Area Historical Society was contacted by Olivia McGowan, a resident of Sanger, with questions about clearing the Duck Creek Cemetery which is located off Sullivan Road At Duck Creek Road in southwest area countryside of Sanger. Olivia and family lives just down the road from the cemetery and were involved with her church providing meals for the group. This cemetery has been neglected over the years with occasionally a civic group tackling this huge task, but has not been cleared since October 2013.
Photographs of the overgrown cemetery were taken and sent to MPact group for their consideration and was approved as one of their eighty-plus projects for the week of June 9-13, 2025.
The MPact team began working at the site on Monday, June 9 and the SAHS organization visited on Tuesday to speak with the group. Fifteen total, including the 3 adults, were busily clearing, mowing, cutting back, trimming, and actually removing poison ivy growing on trees. There had already been a dump truck-load of debris hauled away with another full load awaiting the return of the truck. And, they even painted the Duck Creek Cemetery sign which had almost faded away.
Leader of this group of 12 young adults were leaders Ty Allert, Andrew Wharton, and Donna Cano and they explained how impressed they were over their group of hard workers. One young man indicated he found a headstone of a child dated 1822 and was interesting to these young people to see how old the cemetery was, based on the numerous headstones. Lots of history in this cemetery. There was a pile of bricks at the back of the cemetery and had obviously been dumped by someone, but they were going to attempt to take care of it. A rock crushing company located down the gravel road stopped by and they were able to “donate” the bricks to the rock crusher business which made the cemetery look even nicer.
The MPact Mission group this year totaled 285 adults and young people. They were scheduled to attend a water park on Thursday with a music festival at the church in Ponder that evening and a few standing close by had big smiles about a break in their hard work. Each evening the different churches held services at the Cowboy Church in Ponder with music, singing, and messages of faith, and each group gave feedback on the project they worked on that day.
Please look at MPact Missions on Facebook to learn even more about this organization. There is a video of the group working at their assigned projects. Local churches may be interested in joining this event for the year 2026. Photographs of “before and after” are shown.
The Sanger Area Historical Society was pleased to provide a small part of this effort by making application and visiting the site numerous times before and after to capture photographs of the work being accomplished. And a special, big THANK YOU to all involved.
