By Erin Bank
Paris has its catacombs. London has a crypt in St. Paul's Cathedral. San Francisco doesn't have cemeteries. Instead, spread across the hills of Colma, just south of the City, headstones mark the graves of San Francisco's dead.
But San Francisco's cemeteries haven't always been in Colma. In fact, the Richmond District has a role in the history of San Francisco's hidden cemeteries.
"San Francisco's Forgotten Cemeteries, a Buried History" is the title of a new book by Glen Park resident Beth Winegarner. She digs into the stories of the birth and death of cemeteries once located within San Francisco city limits – and, she says, still occupy the land underneath some of the Richmond's most famous landmarks. She blends historical record with personal stories, with the hope that San Franciscans can keep this history alive as an homage to the dead.
"Without knowledge, we can't remember them," Winegarner said.
In 1853, the existing Mission Dolores and municipal Yerba Buena cemeteries were becoming too small to keep up with the booming population – and associated deaths – of gold rush San Francisco. City officials set their sights on a swath of land on the outskirts of town, far away from the dirt and disease of downtown, somewhere development was sure never to touch, in an area that we now call Laurel Heights, Anza Vista and the Inner Richmond. Furthermore, there was a growing trend of "rural" or "garden" cemeteries: lush, verdant land where visitors could picnic and spend a day. Lone Mountain Cemetery, as it was dedicated in 1854, was eventually partitioned into four main cemeteries: Calvary, Odd Fellows (including the still-existing Columbarium), Masonic and Laurel Hill. An estimated 136,000 dead were buried here.
The monument marking Sen. David Broderick's grave (the pointy one in the far distance) was in the Laurel Hill Cemetery, near where the Trader Joe's on Masonic Avenue is today. In the foreground is Calvary Cemetery, on Lone Mountain. Courtesy photo.
There remained the problem of a municipal cemetery, where those unaffiliated with the groups running these cemeteries (religious and fraternal organizations), including the indigent, could be buried (not to mention a place for those buried at Yerba Buena to be reinterred to make room for City Hall). The solution: City Cemetery, built on 200 acres bound by 33rd and 48th avenues, Geary Boulevard (then Point Lobos Toll Road), and the Pacific Ocean. Opened in 1870, City Cemetery buried up to 40 people per day, up to nearly 30,000 graves in total. However, record-keeping was spotty at best, and much was lost in the fires following the 1906 earthquake, so it's impossible to know exactly how many people were buried there – and how many perhaps still rest there.
"Don't dig in Lincoln Park," Winegarner said.
By the 1890s, however, these cemeteries were no longer on the outskirts of town. The dead now had living neighbors, who became concerned about the location of the cemeteries. Developers wanted roads to be extended through the cemeteries, and residents and public health officials worried about sanitation and water quality. Winegarner's book reveals the forces behind the eventual banning of the sale of all new lots for future burials, in 1896, by Mayor Aldoph Sutro.
Sutro, of course, is an integral part of the Richmond's history, and his antics leading to the eventual demise of all San Francisco cemeteries are chronicled in Winegarner's book. Before he was mayor, Sutro, in no coincidence, bought up the land surrounding City Cemetery and was one of the loudest opponents of the cemetery (mostly, it seems, because he wanted to use the land to serve his own purposes, including building railroad tracks to reach the Cliff House).
Unfortunately, sales of new lots were a main source of income for upkeep, and soon the cemeteries fell into complete disrepair. Winegarner includes stories of the various illicit ways the grounds were used and abused. When they could, the groups that managed the various cemeteries began reinterring in Colma, usually by creating a mass grave for those remains and selling the new plots for future burials. As bodies were moved, the gravestones were used in city construction projects and can still be seen around the City, including in Aquatic Park and Ocean Beach.
The cover of Beth Winegarner's book, "San Francisco's Forgotten Cemeteries," shows the Richmond District's Columbarium of San Francisco. It is located at the end of the Lorraine Court cul de sac, just south of Geary Boulevard and east of Arguello Boulevard. Courtesy photo.
All new burials were finally banned in 1901 (a change Sutro did not live to see), but the existing cemeteries were allowed to remain in San Francisco until 1937, when they were ordered to relocate. These years proved a grisly period, as individual cemeteries grappled with re-interment and closing. Details in Winegarner's book include the irreverent ways the graves were exhumed and the staggering numbers of remains still thought to exist under the ground (and those that have been found during construction projects to this day).
These actions served as the impetus for Winegarner's book. She wants San Francisco to remember those residents who ended up in mass graves in Colma, those residents whose final resting place was lost to poor record-keeping, and those who remain in unmarked graves somewhere underneath houses, museums and golf courses. Her book is also a commentary on how American society doesn't talk about death, which, she says, allows things like the treatment of San Francisco's dead to happen.
"There are some neighborhood antics that seem perhaps familiar to some today. Of course, it's relatable that you don't want to live next to a smelly cemetery. But is the solution to get rid of it or is it to improve its upkeep?" Winegarner said.
By writing about the history of San Francisco cemeteries, however macabre it may seem, Winegarner allows us to remember the dead even when we can't visit their graves.
"San Francisco's Hidden Cemeteries: A Buried History," published by The History Press, is available at bookstores, including Green Apple Books. Winegarner will be giving a free talk at the Columbarium on Oct. 27, with fellow cemetery writer Loren Rhoads – eventbrite.com/e/why-we-love-cemeteries-tickets-699304126467. Learn more at bethwinegarner.com.
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