Tag Archives: San Francisco cemetery

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.

My Last Cemetery Lecture of the Season

1930 mission linen bells002This Saturday night, I’ll be using my collection of cemetery postcards to illustrate the changes to the oldest European-style cemetery in Northern California.
My talk will be part of the fabled Litcrawl in San Francisco’s Mission District. I’ll be joined by Odd Salon Fellows Laura Rubin and Casey Selden for tales from the surprising history of cities of the dead.

Odd Salon: Cemetery Stories

Saturday October 20, 2018 6:30pm – 7:30pm

Admission is FREE!

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Loren Rhoads

Loren Rhoads is the author of 199 Cemeteries to See Before You Die and Wish You Were Here: Adventures in Cemetery Travel. She blogs about graveyards as travel destinations at CemeteryTravel.com. She’ll be talking about San Francisco’s Mission Dolores.

 

Laura Rubin

Odd Salon Fellow. She’ll be talking about London’s Funeral Railway.

 

Casey Selden

Casey Selden is a Fellow of Odd Salon and a fermentation dabbler. She’s made beer, cider and wine for kicks in her kitchen. She’ll be talking about a grave in Chicago and the woman who goes along with it.

Expert talks on odd topics; odd talks on everything else.

Cemetery Travel in San Francisco

The time has come to gather all the San Francisco cemetery pieces spread across Cemetery Travel into one place. These posts served as research for the Laurel Hill Cemetery speech I gave at the Swedish American Hall last night. If you’re visiting Cemetery Travel from last night’s Memento Mori event, welcome.

This list of links does not yet tell the complete story of San Francisco’s eviction of its dead. I’m very close to finishing a new book with the working title of The Pioneer Cemeteries of the San Francisco Bay Area, which will go into much more detail — and have more pictures. My search for a publisher will begin shortly. Stay tuned!

A selection of the graveyards of San Francisco:

BroderickLone Mountain001

Image from a stereoview card of Senator David Broderick’s obelisk in Lone Mountain Cemetery, San Francisco, 1866

Former Laurel Hill Cemetery site:
https://cemeterytravel.com/2014/09/03/cemetery-of-the-week-145-the-ghost-of-san-franciscos-laurel-hill/

Former Russian Hill cemetery site:
https://cemeterytravel.com/2014/01/08/cemetery-of-the-week-119-san-franciscos-russian-hill/

Former Marine Hospital Cemetery memorial:
https://cemeterytravel.com/2012/11/14/cemetery-of-the-week-83-united-states-marine-hospital-cemetery/

Mission Dolores:
https://cemeterytravel.com/2011/04/27/cemetery-of-the-week-13-mission-dolores-cemetery/

Neptune Society Columbarium at the former Odd Fellows Cemetery:
https://cemeterytravel.com/2011/08/31/cemetery-of-the-week-30-the-san-francisco-columbarium/

Thomas Starr King’s grave:
https://cemeterytravel.com/2012/09/25/weekly-photo-challenge-solitary/

San Francisco National Cemetery:
https://cemeterytravel.com/2013/02/20/cemetery-of-the-week-91-san-francisco-national-cemetery/

Where San Franciscans were moved to in Colma:

Cypress Lawn obelisk001

An obelisk marks the Pioneer Mound at Cypress Lawn

Cypress Lawn Memorial Park:
https://cemeterytravel.com/2012/04/11/cemetery-of-the-week-55-cypress-lawn-memorial-park/

Home of Peace:
https://cemeterytravel.com/2014/05/07/cemetery-of-the-week-135-temple-emanu-els-home-of-peace/

Hills of Eternity:
https://cemeterytravel.com/2013/11/13/cemetery-of-the-week-116-wyatt-earps-gravesite/

Woodlawn Memorial Park:
https://cemeterytravel.com/2013/01/02/cemetery-of-the-week-85-the-gravesite-of-emperor-norton/

Olivet Memorial Park:
https://cemeterytravel.com/2018/04/04/cemetery-of-the-week-165-olivet-memorial-park/

Memento Mori evening

Screen Shot 2018-04-10 at 12.01.38 PMTuesday, April 17, I’ll be participating in the citywide Reimagine End of Life festival across San Francisco from April 16-22. The evening I’m part of is called Memento Mori.

Memento Mori is an ancient Roman phrase meaning “Remember Your Mortality.” Come experience a night of amazing creators sharing their work and unique backstories on the topic of mortality, loss, memory, and love.

The lineup for Memento Mori is:

  • investigation of the history of the lost cemeteries of SF – Loren Rhoads
  • Emotions and the end of life ( Fear and Panic) from the Western Psychological Point of view, how secular Buddhism can help (Separate-Selflessness and Impermanence) – Dr. Paul Ekman and Dr. Eve Ekman
  • death of neighborhoods and the effect on the people that live there – Liz Ogbu
  • the art of shadow puppetry and the stories within -Daniel Barash
  • a poignant visual symphony covering a recent police shooting of a young man, from a healing mother’s perspective – Angelica Ekeke
  • tracing the roots of the themes of dying, death and mourning at the end of life, and how we can deal with it – Dr. September Williams
  • and a thought provoking look at the sound in hospitals and how it effects our ability to heal and to die in peace….Yoko Sen

You can get tickets here: https://letsreimagine.org/event-share/5/event/487

You can find the whole Reimagine End of Life schedule here: https://letsreimagine.org/san-francisco/schedule/all.

 

Four Graves for Harvey Milk

Earlier this month, I wrote a guest piece for The Cemetery Club for LGBT History Month about Harvey Milk: https://cemeteryclub.wordpress.com/2018/02/01/four-graves-for-harvey-milk/