Lonely Graves

Gravestones are meant to memorialize the dead. Often, however, graves are left untended and forgotten.

Something about fall makes me think of these lonely graves. And, no, this is not meant as a Halloween post. Just a reminder (memento mori) of those, who through happenstance or neglect, are left largely unremembered.

Forgotten cemetery

A memorial to the Chinese buried at Lincoln Park is the only visible remnant of the cemetery.

San Francisco's Lincoln Park is home to the majestic Legion of Honor art museum and a golf course in the Lands End section of the city. Atop a hill, the site boasts amazing views of the ocean, bay, and city. What is not visible are the thousands of graves that once made up the Golden Gate Cemetery, many of which are still occupied. 

Cemeteries do move. There are many examples around the world of cemeteries giving way to development, erosion, or other natural or man-made calamity. The Golden Gate Cemetery itself was established in part to house remains from the defunct Yerba Buena Cemetery. But when the new cemetery was closed, the handling of the graves and their contents was haphazard at best. Families were given a short period of time to disinter their loved one's remains. And they had to pay for it. The result was that hundreds and perhaps thousands of graves remain under the soil where putters putt and art lovers explore art.

Tales from the conversion of the cemetery into a park are both sad and gruesome: funerary monuments ripped out, tombstones thrown over the cliff into the ocean, and many body parts and grave artifacts surfacing through the soil. During a major renovation of the museum in 1993, a photographer captured many images of skeletons found directly under the structure. 

Photos of excavation at Legion of Honor

Hidden cemetery

Along highway 6 in Washington State, near the town of Pe Ell, lies an unusual graveyard, tucked away along a dirt road in the woods. A dozen or so graves of Japanese timber workers from a small lumber town that no longer exists called Walville. The graves are sunken into the landscape, barely noticeable except for the plastic flowers placed atop them presumably by descendants or the Japanese community.

Brothers Darius and Clark Kinsey photographed Walville about 1919 in their rounds of Northwest lumber camps. Nothing of what appears below remains.

Clark Kinsey, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Deadman's Island

In 1846, an American warship, the Savannah, sailed into San Pedro Bay in Southern California with orders to march on the pueblo of Los Angeles and wrest it from the Californios, the local Mexican population who had just managed to push out the Spanish occupiers. The story of that ill-fated expedition is told elsewhere. When the dust cleared a half-dozen seamen were dead, including one felled by friendly fire. In their haste to leave port, the crew of the Savannah buried their comrades on a small islet in the bay which they dubbed "Dead Man's Island." 

"Wm H. Berry, O.S. departed this Life from the effects of a wound receiv'd in Battle. Sent his body on "Dead Man's Island," So named by us." (Log of the U.S. Frigate Savannah kept by Robert Carson Duvall")

The islet may already have served as a makeshift graveyard prior to the arrival of the Savannah. Richard Henry Dana, in his chronicle of life at sea, learned of an English sea captain who had died (possibly murdered by his crew) and been buried at the top of the island. That would have been prior to 1835, when Dana's ship passed by, but within the memory of the local residents.

Dana was struck by the melancholy story:

"The man died far from home; without a friend near him; by poison, it was suspected, and no one to inquire into it; and without proper funeral rites; the mate (as I was told) glad to have him out of the way, hurrying him up the hill and into the ground, without a word or a prayer." (Dana, Two Years Before the Mast).

In 1928, Deadman's Island was dredged out of existence. In the process, workers uncovered several skeletons, their identities sketchy. However, at some point the bones of at least three of the Savannah crew were unearthed and reburied at the Mare Island Naval Cemetery in the San Francisco Bay area.

Sailing ships at San Pedro Harbor 1885; Deadman's Island in distance. 

Photo courtesy of Los Angeles Public Library.

Later view of San Pedro with Deadman's Island prominent in background. 

Photo courtesy of Los Angeles Public Library.

Guarding the Coast

This obscure little cemetery contains only a handful of graves: four surfmen who died while serving at the nearby Life Saving Station and, possibly, the family of a man who worked with the surfmen and who established the graveyard. If others are buried here, the markers have been lost. The graves date from the 1890s.

It is easy to breeze by the cemetery on your way out to Drake's Beach or the Point Reyes Lighthouse, although it is only a few hundred feet off the main road. A sign pointing the way from Sir Francis Drake Boulevard reads "Historic Life-Saving Station Cemetery;" some find this amusing.

In 1915, the U.S. Life-Saving Service was folded into the U.S Coast Guard.

I love to stop here because of the beauty and serenity of the spot up on a small hill under eucalyptus trees with a beautiful 360 degree view of the bay and meadows. A great spot to see birds, too.

 

Anderson and Carstens, as well as Larson (below) died in accidents caused by large waves hitting their boats. Korpala died from a sudden illness. These three were originally buried in the dunes near the Life-Saving station, but later moved to this private graveyard.

The Unclaimed

Society has struggled with the problem of what to do with the unclaimed dead, those who die homeless, indigent, or simply alone without family to mourn them. Throughout history, many of these unfortunate individuals have been unceremoniously dumped in "potters fields," often with little or no identifying markers and sometimes comingled with the remains of others.

In King County, Washington, where I live, the medical examiner's office maintains an Indigent Remains Program. Every year or so, the remains of unclaimed individuals are cremated, placed in individual urns, and buried in a ceremony during which their names (if known) are read aloud. In 2026 alone a shocking 626 persons were interred in a common tomb at Mount Olivet Cemetery in Renton.

Western State Hospital is a state psychiatric hospital still in operation in Steilacoom, Washington. 

Between 1879 and 1953 thousands of patients who died at the hospital without family to claim them were buried in numbered graves nearby. Names were not inscribed on the simple markers due to the perceived shame of their situation. In recent years a group of volunteers undertook to replace the original markers with new one containing names. This huge project was completed this year, 2026.

New grave markers paired with the old numbered markers, Western State Hospital Memorial Cemetery. Photo courtesy of Becca Most, The News Tribune

A similar project is underway at Northern State Hospital, a now defunct psychiatric institution in Sedro-Woolley, Washington, where cremated remains were often buried in tin cans. At least at Northern State, grave markers included the initials of the deceased, making identification a bit easier.

The Unrecorded

Finding records of burials of older graveyards can be a thankless task which speaks to how quickly places of remembrance become places forgotten. A particularly sad example is the Comet Lodge Cemetery on Seattle's Beacon Hill. Rumored to be once an Indian (Duwamish) burying ground, the site became a place for the burial of early settlers and their descendants, complete with ornate gravestones. However, over the decades, the grounds have been neglected and vandalized, ownership bounced around, some remains exhumed and reburied elsewhere; others presumably remain even where headstones have clearly been moved or removed. Many have written about this derelict burial ground, but many questions remain. How many are still buried here? Who are they? What is the future of this forlorn patch of land? And what the heck was the Comet Lodge and why is it now the name of a hair salon? Why is there a grave marker shaped like a tree trunk, and why are so many of the remaining headstones scraped clear of the inscriptions?

Random headstones piled together haphazardly.

According to the Rainier Valley Historical Society, tree trunk grave markers such as this one often marked the burial of a member of the Woodmen of the World, a fraternal organization. Comet Lodge itself was a fraternal organization.