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From: "Colleen" <>
Subject: Activists: Local site still holds burial remains
Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2005 21:12:59 -0700


Stockton Record Monday....
Activists: Local site still holds burial remains
Greg Kane
Record Staff Writer
Published Monday, Oct 10, 2005
Local activists believe several buildings along North CaliforniaStreet sit
on an old cemetery still containing buried remains.The 15-acre strip --
running parallel with Rural Cemetery between EastMonterey Avenue and East
Pine Street -- includes Alpine Market, the BeverlyManor nursing home and
several medical offices. Portions of the land wereused by Stockton State
Hospital in the late 1800s and early 1900s to burypatients who died at the
asylum, said Marge Campbell, a Lodi resident whohas worked for six years to
unearth the cemetery's history.Some believe the area should never have been
developed in the first place.Sue Silver of the cemetery advocacy group
California Saving Graves saidThursday that the law forbids cemeteries to be
rezoned unless all of theremains are first removed and reburied
elsewhere."When the state used that land to bury remains, it became a
publiccemetery," Silver said. "You can't build on a cemetery."A previous
owner, the American Legion's Karl Ross Post, claimed it moved allthe bodies
in the 1950s.Yet, remains have since been discovered at the site. On Oct.
25, 1990, theunidentified remains of hundreds of people found at the old
State HospitalCemetery site were transferred to a mass grave in nearby Rural
Cemetery,said Ruben Sanchez, Rural's manager.Others have found remains on
the property over the years as well, Campbellsaid."They kept finding
bodies," she said.
A weedy lot between Alpine Market and Rural Cemetery is the only
remainingundeveloped parcel in the one-time graveyard. Another structure
near the site -- the Stockton Medical Arts Building at2420 N. California
St. -- is being demolished, but it's not clear whetheranother building will
go up in its place.The lot's owner, Stockton-based Delta Land Developers,
could not be reachedfor comment.The mental hospital, which closed in 1996,
stopped using the cemetery forburials in 1919. It was an abandoned lot next
to Rural Cemetery for decadesbefore the Karl Ross Post bought it in the
1940s.City officials in 1955 demanded that the estimated 3,000 bodies be
removedbefore the 15-acre lot could be rezoned for development. American
Legionrepresentatives at the time said the bodies had been moved to a
"commonburial area" near Rural Cemetery, but Campbell questions whether such
aneffort took place."They did it on paper," said Campbell, whose interest in
genealogy spurredher to research the cemetery.Most people today aren't aware
there was ever a cemetery on the site,Campbell said. Most of the patients
were buried there because they had norelatives to claim them, so the site
never received many visitors.Silver believes the entire site should be
excavated so the remains canreceive proper burial before anything else is
built. Campbell, however, justwants a marker so people will understand the
area's history."It's just sad
that this is here, and nobody's doing anything with it,"Campbell said.

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