abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=local&id=3589212
When John Blackett looks out over the Richmond District, he sees a place where San Francisco's earliest settlers thought they would spend eternit y They were wrong. John Blackett, cemetery historian: "In the 1900's, the board of superviso rs voted to stop all burials, and no more burials. They decided they wer e going to move them out of the city and get the land." By the 1930's, the political and legal wrangling took its toll. John Blackett, cemetery historian: "They were falling apart. Kids would go in and take bone s and clothing and strew them around." So the city declared the cemeteries a public nuisance and ordered their s ilent residents to Colma, south of San Francisco. Another 26,000 sit in the shadow of a Home Depot and Best Buy. John Blackett, cemetery historian: "I think it was the largest mass remov al of bodies in history. San Francisco historian Blacket estimates that as many as 200,000 people were dug up. In 1994, renovations at the Palace of the Legion of Honor m useum uncovered more than a thousand of San Francisco's poorest resident s Golfers at Lincoln Park's golf course may not be aware of the thousands o f people six-feet under. A monument and a jostled tombstone hidden in th e nearby brush are the only clues to what lies below. No one knows for s ure just how many people are buried here. Their tombstones and crypts - like others in the city - were broken up an d scattered around the city. Others make up the rain gutters and retaining walls at San Francisc o's Buena Vista Park. Tucked away on quiet Lorraine St reet in the Richmond District is the only intact marker of a once-sprawl ing cemetery: the San Francisco Columbarium. It is home to the cremated remains of some of the city's earliest pioneers. The Neptune Society took over the building in the 1980's. Emmitt Watson, caretaker, Neptune Society Columbarium: "We had mushrooms all growing out of the walls, mildew, fungus. Today the Columbarium is the only place in the city where the dead can be interred. Surprisingly there is still room available - an exclusive add ress considering who your neighbors would be. Emmitt Watson, caretaker, Neptune Society Columbarium: "We call them the old pioneers - the Eddy's, the Steiner's, the Shattuck's, the Page's, th e Haight's, the Folger's - as in coffee. But while John Blackett wants to remember the famous, he still searches f or clues to the not-so-famous. John Blackett, cemetery historian: "Their were a lot that were here that were all by themselves - lone pioneers - lone 49ers - that died in paupe r plots. They bought a place somewhere in the city thinking it would be their eternal rest." There are only two marked cemeteries in San Francisco: one in the Presidi o and one at the Mission Dolores.
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