KENT RENO
Joseph Bigelow. He harnessed the energy of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society and purchased 72 acres along the Charles River. Visitors passed through an ornate gateway and were greeted by a bucolic setting of hills, woods, lakes and greenery at every turn. To everyone’s surprise, the cemetery attracted visitors from other American cities. While Bigelow’s motivation for a clean and tidy place to bury the dead stemmed from the physician’s justifiable fear of repeating the widespread yellow fever epidemic of 1822 in New York, which was aggravated by sloppy habits of burying the diseased, another deathly entrepreneur entered the scene in the early 1900s with far more Victorian ideals about handling the dead. Hubert Eaton, a Midwestern businessman, took over as manager of Los Angeles’ Forest Lawn cemetery in 1913 with plans to create a “gladsome” resting place for the deceased that would keep thoughts of death virtually away from the visitor’s mind. Who wouldn’t rest in peace with the kind of view you get at Fernwood Cemetery near Tennessee Valley? To achieve this manicured vision, he forbade upright tombstones and allowed only flat bronze markers, set into the ground. The greenery was kept as tidy as any neighborhood lawn, and burial sections were given sugary titles like “Eventide,” “Sweet Memories” and “Vesperland.” Forest Lawn soon became known as the “Disneyland of death” as other features were added: museums, patriotic exhibits, replicas of famous artwork and more. It even served as the site of several weddings. by Jo r d a n E . Ro s e n fe l d To Eaton’s credit, the cemetery attracted thousands of paying customers every year, ou’re strolling across a lawn so chaise even attracted paying customers—often and Eaton’s name went on to become synonypristine it seems unnatural— wealthy Parisians—once the cemetery took on mous with sterilized death. The taphophiles among you—yes, people dotted with stone benches and the remains of notable dead Frenchmen inwho love to tour cemeteries are a large pine trees that filter dappled afternoon light, cluding Moliere and La Fontaine. flanked by flowering bushes. Framed against Before this, the dead were often treated enough group to have earned their own a blue Marin sky, birds tweet a gentle song. as refuse, tossed into empty fields, plots title—may already know that Marin County Where are you? A park? A botanical garden? and ditches—piled together without care is home to more than 30 cemeteries, many Nope, you’re at the cemetery. or consideration for the lives they had lived among the earliest of the “modern” style of cemeteries, as the You could be at Pioneer Memorial Cemor the grieving famigrowing 18th-century etery in Novato, a forested “final resting place” lies who lost them population in Marin overlooking Marin’s signature hillsides, or (or the unpleaswas born right as the perhaps Valley Memorial, in Bahia—which ant odors that acold methods of graveis the only local cemetery to boast a Muslim companied them). keeping (or not, as memorial building, featuring Sufi architecThe only people the case tended to be) ture. In these peaceful pastures there’s very to receive special were dying out. little outside the slabs of granite underfoot to burial consideration Still, only a handful give away the fact that you’re walking upon were usually clergy, of Marin’s graveyards the bones of generations of the dead. While whose bodies were are the pastoral places we may take these Eden-like resting places for often entombed in one might be able to granted, cemeteries weren’t always this pictur- church catacombs sit and enjoy a picnic esque. The cemetery as we know it today— or grounds (even lunch, such as Mt. Tanearly indistinguishable from a pristinely these had a tendency The foresty pathways through Pioneer Memorial Cemetery malpais in San Rafael, landscaped park—is a remarkably modern to stink). are quite popular for Novato families visiting the big which opened in the invention that originated with the French, Early American children’s playground beneath. 1870s, and Mt. Olivet who were the first to tidy up the stench of settlers took the death. Literally. Travel writer Tom Weil writes more practical approach: They buried their Catholic Cemetery, in San Rafael, where you that in the 1700s the burial grounds of France dead wherever they happened to die. It was must “belong to the Church” to join the dead. (and much of Europe) “fairly seethed and even rare to mark graves, as pioneering life Some, in fact, are so old that, like Sunny Hill bubbled with putrefaction.” Bodies were often required people to move on in the search for Cemetery in the northern region of Sausalito, buried in trenches left open for months until food and shelter. By the early 1800s, however, they are no longer taking new “residents” and full—spreading disease and really annoying family graveyards—small patches just behind come with warnings about walking carefully the neighbors. a homestead with crude wooden markers— so as not to fall through a breach in the foliage into an aging cistern. And don’t be surprised It was in 1804 that a large stretch of hillside were more common. if you feel a little haunted walking around in an eastern suburb of Paris became the first In the United States, the first modern “garcemetery designed with dual purposes—not den cemetery” was opened in Boston’s Mount the Mission San Rafael near Fifth Avenue; the remains of hundreds of Native Americans still only as a resting place for the dead, but a pas- Auburn in 1831, just outside Cambridge, by exist beneath the streets and buildings in the toral retreat for city folk. Cimetiere du Pere La- Harvard professor, physician and botanist
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old Mission San Rafael stomping grounds. The oldest Marin cemetery is Bolinas Cemetery, established at St. Mary Magdalen Church in 1853. The cemetery holds the bones of Druids and early Methodists, and Presbyterians. It’s one of many historic cemeteries that tell a tale of the county’s earliest residents; this includes Marshall Cemetery, with a large number of buried Miwok, and the nearly 150 immigrants who were buried at the Angel Island Post Cemetery until 1947, when those remains were moved to San Bruno. Besides being prettied-up receptacles for our bones, cemeteries are capsules of history, preserving our ancestry. And they’re a great place for a picnic lunch.Ð Send epitaphs to Jordan at jordanwritelife@gmail.com.
the 5th annual
Grave situations Marin was a hub for ‘modern’ cemeteries— where everyone can rest in peace...
JACK WALSH
Y
12 PACIFIC SUN OCTOBER 29 - NOVEMBER 4, 2010
DEATH issue ‘No matter how I struggle and strive— I’ll never get out of this world alive’ —Hank Williams We feel your pain, Hank. Which is why each year we dedicate our Halloween issue to the very subject this week’s trickor-treaty, candy-coated, rubber-masked ode-to-consumerism holiday was originally intended to commemorate—death. We’re leaving the pumpkin-patch roundups and stories about 2010’s most challenging corn mazes to the local dailies to present our fifth annual Death issue—five stories confronting the culmination of life, with all the reverence, dignity and curiosity the final stage of living deserves. So chin up, Hank Williams. The rest of us ain’t gettin’ out of it alive, neither. —Jason Walsh Comment on this story in TownSquare, at ›› pacificsun.com