Category Archives: Cemetery event

Lectures, tours, art exhibits, and more in cemeteries.

Beth Winegarner’s San Francisco’s Forgotten Cemeteries

One of the things that I am absolutely fascinated by is the way cities are built up over their dead. In long-lived cities like Rome or Paris or London, it’s inevitable that cemeteries from the past have been built over and forgotten. In San Francisco, which isn’t even 250 years old, the shortness of memory is more surprising.

Journalist Beth Winegarner shares my obsession with cemeteries. Her newest book is “San Francisco’s Forgotten Cemeteries: A Buried History,” which comes out today. In the book, she looks into the cemeteries that used to lie beneath the Presidio Parade Ground, the Asian Art Museum, what’s now a Target, and much more.

I asked her to tell us about it.

“San Francisco’s Forgotten Cemeteries: A Buried History”

by Beth Winegarner

San Francisco is famous for many things: tech companies like Twitter and Uber, the cacophony of sea lions at Pier 39, the Painted Ladies houses, major earthquakes. It’s also known, especially among locals, for not having any cemeteries. 

But what if I told you that settlers established nearly 30 cemeteries in San Francisco between the arrival of Spanish missionaries in the 1770s and 1901, when city leaders banned any new burials within city limits — and that, in the process of moving 150,000 graves to Colma in the early 20th century, tens of thousands of graves were left behind? 

My new book, “San Francisco’s Forgotten Cemeteries: A Buried History” traces the history of these burial grounds, from one at Mission Dolores where headstones still mark the grounds, to a pet cemetery hidden beneath a freeway overpass in San Francisco’s Presidio. It includes many graveyards where bodies still rest beneath the ground while residents, workers, and tourists unknowingly pass over them every day.

Writing is one of my favorite ways to connect with the history of a place, and with the place itself. In my first book, “Sacred Sonoma,” I wrote about unusual places in Sonoma County, in Northern California: Locations where people reported ineffable (or chilling) experiences, or hauntings. I dug into local history, including indigenous and settler history, and created a kind of travel guide to these sites, which remains popular to this day. 

After almost 20 years living in San Francisco, I felt like I wanted to get to know this place better, and a friend connected me with an amazing digital archive of local newspapers. Out of curiosity I looked for articles about San Francisco’s cemeteries, and began to discover just how many there were, how badly mismanaged they were in the early years of the city, and how many were forgotten. 

As San Francisco and its population expanded, graveyards were pushed farther and farther out from the city center. And with so many people coming and going, especially after the Gold Rush, the city had very little institutional memory. A cemetery would be decommissioned, its grave markers (usually wood) removed and sometimes its burials relocated, only to be rediscovered when a new generation wanted to dig sewer lines or build something. Many crews fled job sites because of what they found beneath the soil. 

After San Francisco banned burials, residents voted to move the graveyards south to a small town just outside city limits. The majority of burials, probably about 75%, were relocated, but about 25% remain in place. They’re beneath the Lincoln Park Golf Course, the Legion of Honor Museum, the Asian Art Museum, the University of San Francisco, and residential neighborhoods of the Golden Gate Park panhandle, among others. 

I became fascinated by these discoveries, and moved by the existence of so many abandoned dead. Once I started learning, I couldn’t help but write, in the hope of sharing this history with others and remembering what so many people had forgotten. It’s helped me understand San Francisco better, and I hope readers find meaning in it, too. 

“San Francisco’s Forgotten Cemeteries: A Buried History” by Beth Winegarner (trade paperback, 172 pages, 60 photographs), with a foreword by Roberto Lovato, author of “Unforgetting: A Memoir of Family, Migration, Gangs and the Revolution in the Americas,” is being published by The History Press on August 28, 2023. You can order a copy  from Amazon or directly from The History Press.

To find out more and to see dates for local and online events in connection with the book, click here.

You can also follow Beth on Instagram, where she’s posting images of the old cemeteries.

I am excited to announce that Beth will chat about all things cemeteries with me on October 27 at the San Francisco Columbarium: RSVP here.

Cemetery Travel news

I was completely burnt out by the time the Death’s Garden Revisited Kickstarter ended in April, but I meant to post that not only did the book reach its funding goal, it bypassed it by a factor of five!

The book is in the proofreader’s hands now. Once she finishes with the text, I should be able to finalize the book’s layout and start ordering printer samples. Backers will have their copies on schedule in October.

I’ll post the order link for everyone else once I have the book is ready for preorders.

Other than that, I was a guest on the Curious State podcast, talking about what makes a cemetery a tourist destination. This was a really fun conversation & Doug’s team did a great job putting it together. Here’s the link, if you’ve got 15 minutes to be entertained: https://pod.link/curiousstate/episode/11cc72334c9520361edd8bdb5f6f22ab

I assembled a list of my Top Five favorites for The Best Books about Cemeteries on Shepherd List. Check out my list and let me know if you agree with my choices: https://shepherd.com/best-books/about-cemeteries

Tomorrow I’m giving a talk called “Using Crowdfunding to Support Cemetery Projects” at the virtual portion of the annual Association for Gravestone Studies Conference. I’m excited to share what I learned during my Kickstarter.

I think you can still get tickets for the conference here: https://gravestonestudies.org/conferences/2022-conference

 

The Kickstarter’s Last Day

It’s finally here! Today is the final day of Kickstarter campaign for the cemetery book I’m editing, Death’s Garden Revisited.

At this point, 100 people have backed the project, ensuring that the black & white photos will be upgraded to color, I’ll be able to commission a couple of essays to fill out the book, and there will be more cemetery photos than I originally planned. This book is going to be so beautiful!

Backers are giving me the ability to finish the sequel to my cemetery memoir, Wish You Were Here: Adventures in Cemetery Travel. Everyone who donated — from the $5 level on up — will receive a copy of the new ebook. I am really excited to find out what they think of it.

The best reward — at least in my mind — is that every backer will be thanked inside Death’s Garden Revisited. I’m thrilled to be able to acknowledge their faith in me.

In case you haven’t seen it, this is the video in which I talk about the book:

Sometimes the video embeds get stripped out of the email versions, so you can watch it at this link: https://youtu.be/gxg-Hjh8-bo

This project has been a dream of mine for 25 years. I’m so excited that it’s going to become a reality this year.

Ask Me Anything on Saturday

This Saturday, April 9 from Noon to 1 PM Pacific: I’m doing my first AMA on Twitter.

I’m a little nervous that no one will ask me any questions, so please, if you are curious about cemeteries, headstones, symbolism, places you should travel to, what the best cemetery books are, what cemetery bloggers you should follow on Instagram, cemetery podcast recommendations, etc…

I’d be glad to answer questions about the Death’s Garden Revisited Kickstarter, too.

You’d make my day if you would come to Twitter on Saturday and ask me something! I’m @morbidloren, if you don’t already follow me.

Death’s Garden Party

This Saturday, April 2, I’ll be hosting a party on the Cemetery Travel Facebook page from Noon to 3:00 PM Pacific to celebrate the successful Kickstarter for Death’s Garden Revisited.

Some of the contributors will stop by to discuss their favorite cemeteries and the stories they added to the book. There will be cemetery-focused prizes and lots of like-minded souls.

Make yourself a cup of tea or pour a glass of cordial and join us at the Cemetery Travel page on Facebook. Here’s the direct link to the party: https://www.facebook.com/events/1416064368811830