Dateline>City of Angels

Knowing my fondness for old graveyards, a friend sent me this link to local news coverage of Atlanta’s Oakland Cemetery. It’s a fun feature series, which includes an online print article, video tours and a humorous piece on some killer epitaphs. (And it’s not even Halloween…)

But that’s the sort of appreciation for these final resting places that I like to see. Unlike Atlanta, here in L.A. the sad truth is that — unless they’re celebrities at Hollywood Forever — the dead don’t get near as much respect. As I’ve noted before, several of our most historic graveyards have long since been paved over. In fact, just over a year ago, the Southland’s first and most notable “pioneer cemetery,” at the end of the Santa Fe Trail near Rosemead, faced similar obliteration.

Oddly, it’s name is Savannah, so I can’t help but wonder if its spirits were sending out subliminal messages to my friend hoping to goad me into revisiting their story. I blogged about the struggle of preservationists to save the burial ground a couple of times on my old, now-defunct Radio Userland blog. Then I, like most Angelenos, simply forgot about the shades of the past residing there.

Now what I wrote has come back to haunt me. It follows the jump…

End of the Line for Pioneer Cemetery?

Of Grave Concern: Yet another historic graveyard may be facing its demise: Savannah Pioneer Cemetery in Rosemead, Calif.

Dating from the mid-1800s, Savannah is located at the end of North America’s famous Old Spanish/Santa Fe Trail. First known as Lexington, and later as El Monte Cemetery, it is the final resting place of hundreds of American pioneers who streamed to California after the territory was wrested from Mexico. Some believe it to be L.A. County’s earliest Protestant graveyard.

A myriad of financial and legal issues have Rosemead officials contemplating the removal of gravestones to create a park space. Names of the interred would be re-inscribed in a “memorial wall.”

Not only would this be an insult to the memory of the cemetery’s occupants and their families, it would forever destroy Savannah’s rustic character. Let’s face it, part of the fun of visiting an old cemetery is weaving through old markers, statuary and monuments and pondering their artistic value while deciphering their inscriptions. You simply don’t get the same experience–or sense of history–from today’s mass-marketed “memorial parks” and their manicured knolls of bland, flat markers…

That original post did not go unchallenged by one of my former blog’s readers.

“Yes, its sad that remains will have to be dug up, but that’s what you have to do for progress. Life is for the living and so is the earth. It would be nice to leave the pioneers buried there but at some point cemeteries will take up too much good land. Where do you draw the line?”

While I’ve always appreciated reader comments, even when they disagree with me, I couldn’t help but but question that particular reader’s premise in a follow-up post…

Take a gander at an aerial photo of the LA basin. Clearly the region’s inhabitants are in no danger of invasion by the dead. Cemeteries account for an extremely small percentage of our urban sprawl. Venture beyond the basin you’ll discover hundreds of miles of open valleys, hillsides and desert. Even within our metropolitan area, there’s no end to vacant lots, decaying warehouses and other blighted real estate that would make far worthier candidates for development than Savannah.

Paving over Savannah, I argued, was akin to desecrating an “an old Indian village or California mission…” Savannah should be preserved, not simply because it was a cemetery, but because it was a significant cultural landmark. In the end, I’m all for progress, I concluded:

But a sense of history helps enrich a community as it moves forward. The living are well served when they preserve diverse landmarks, from Native American villages to old Spanish missions to pioneer cemeteries. Savannah is more than an abode of the dead. It’s a place where the past yet lives and breathes. Let’s not be so eager to chisel its epitaph.

So that’s the background. Considering my passion on the topic, it’s hard to believe I never really returned to it. The question, of course, is whatever became of the old digs? Thankfully, good news, which will be the subject of an upcoming post.