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From: "David D. Smith" <>
Subject: Re: CITY CEMETARY
Date: Tue, 02 Dec 1997 20:30:50 -0700

Scott Romney wrote:

> I would like to know if there is any map available to indicate where grave
> sites at City Cemetary, Salt Lake City, UT. are located.
>
> I have obtained through the CD "Salt Lake City Cemetary Records" the
> locations (plot #, row, etc) of the plots for my family members that were
> buried there.
>
> I would like to visit the cemetary some day soon (I live in California).
>
> Any help would be appreciated as well as a way to maybe even contact
> someone that could assist me.
>
> Can anyone tell me the history of the cemetary and where it is located as
> well??
>
> Scott HOGGAN ROMNEY
>

The address of the Salt Lake City Cemetery is 220 North "N" Street. Their
telephone number is 801-596-5020. They are located north and east of Temple
Square but within the city limits. When you visit the sexton office, give
them the name you seek. They will give you a map with the location marked. I
am sure they would do this for you in writing if you send a SASE envelope.

If you have any problems obtaining this map you can e-mail me and the next
time I am in the area I could visit the office myself.

Here is a little article for you to read that might be of interest:

Deseret News Archives,
Sunday, May 29, 1994

S.L. CEMETERY ALIVE WITH LOCAL HISTORY

Tour offers fascinating glimpse at graves of the rich, poor and infamous.

- Librarian's note: For tour information contact Jeff Johnson at 538-3012.

By Karl Cates, Staff Writer

Most days at the Salt Lake City Cemetery are pretty dead, so to speak.

Its 18-acre size buffers any racket from the surrounding Avenues
neighborhood, and its age has allowed trees to grow old, blanketing the
graveyard in shade and silence.

But a certain vibrance lurks at hand, brought to life by people like Jeff
Johnson, official state archivist and definitive expert on the place, which,
with its more than 110,000 occupied plots, is the biggest municipal-owned
graveyard in America.

To spend 90 minutes with Johnson on one of his patent tours of the cemetery
is to wander back through the years, pausing now and then for a look into
some arcane nook of history.

Here lie polygamists, Jews, criminals, paupers and Chinese Buddhists, all in
a grid that has its own street system separate from the rest of town.

Among the highlights of a jaunt through the Salt Lake City Cemetery's
graves:

- The first ones, dated 1848, holding two small children of the Wallace
family. The youngsters died the year after Mormons settled the Salt Lake
Valley. At the time, the cemetery was barren and dry. It wasn't until around
the turn of the century that the city began treating it as a
Victorian park. The graves are at the northeast corner of Main Street and
Grand Avenue.

- Joseph A. Slade, remembered for the curious circumstances of his burial.
Slade, a Mexican War veteran who lived in Montana, asked as his dying wish
that he be buried somewhere back East. His survivors gave it their best,
pickling his body in a barrel of whiskey andshipping it off.
Complications arose about the time it got to Salt Lake City, and he ended up
planted here. Northeast of Main and 240 North.

- Simon Bamberger, the first non-Mormon governor of the state. Bamberger is
technically in one of three Jewish-owned plots that abut the main graveyard,
peopled by names like Shapiro, Bernstein, Solomon, Auerbach and Rosenbaum.
Also here is a site nicknamed ``Emo's Tomb'' by local teens who over the
years have practiced a late-night ritual of dancing around it and then
peering into an urn to see the resident ghost. In the central part of the
cemetery along the south edge of 240 North.

- Thomas Kearns, the silver magnate who built what is now the Governor's
Mansion, served as U.S. senator from Utah and founded the Salt Lake Tribune.
Johnson notes that Kearns was struck and killed by a horseless carriage in
downtown Salt Lake in 1918, becoming one of the area's earliest traffic
fatalities. East of 1100 East and Grand Avenue.

- One of Utah's largest concentrations of veterans, buried beneath simple
white stones. At 1100 East and 405 North.

- A Chinese section, conspicuous by the characters that appear on the
headstones and a nearby incense burner that stands 6 feet high. Founded by
Chinese-American merchants in 1919, the tradition for years was to be buried
here and then one day have the remains shipped back to China. But with the
fall of the nationalists in World War II and the victory of
Communism, that practice ended, and this became the first and last resting
place for Chinese immigrants and their descendants. Southwest of 405 North
and 1040 East.

- An unmarked paupers' graveyard, tucked away on a grassy slope. Northeast
of Central Avenue and 240 North.

- President Spencer W. Kim-ball, who presided over the LDS Church before its
current leader, President Ezra Taft Benson. President Kimball's headstone is
relatively inconspicuous, and he's buried ``among the people,'' as Johnson
says, in an upper part of the graveyard. His plot is marked in part by
petrified wood reminiscent of his Arizona youth. North of Wasatch
Avenue and Main Street.

- The Sundance Kid, if you believe Hiram Bebee, who died in 1955 after
claiming for years that he was Butch Cassidy's outlaw compadre. Right beside
him a tombstone marks the bones of 14 state prison inmates who died between
1903 and 1926, some by execution. Their headstones note when they died but
makes no mention of their birth. Just above 11th
Avenue.

- The biggest marker in the cemetery, serving as a memorial to Hyrum Smith,
brother to church prophet and founder Joseph Smith. Both Smiths are actually
buried together in a tomb at Nauvoo, Ill. Southwest of Main Street and 280
North.

- A cluster of headstones that mark a number of colorful Mormon lives.
President Wilford Woodruff was the church leader who decreed an end to
polygamy. President Woodruff is buried with his five wives, including the
first, Phebe W. Carter of Scarboro, Maine, who preceded him in death. Unable
to attend the funeral because he was wanted by federal
agents in a polygamy crackdown, President Woodruff arranged to have her
procession pass the house in which he was hiding. Northwest of Main Street
and Grand Avenue.

- A few steps away is Orrin Porter Rockwell, the gunfighter and guard to
Brigham Young who, at the hands of Missouri vigilantes, survived a jail stay
in which his hair grew long and unkempt. Alone among his troops to recognize
Rockwell upon his return, Young told Rockwell he would live a long and
fruitful life if he never cut his locks. Rockwell abided by the blessing and
died a natural death at the age of 64, a year after Young.

- Forty yards to the south lies Martha Hughes Cannon, the first woman state
legislator in America.

More modern sections of the graveyard, like the one just below 11th Avenue,
reflect the changing times, says Johnson.

``Here you see less segregation,'' he notes, pointing to headstones that
suggest a diverse ethnic blend. Side by side are families that include
Ordakowski, Nemella, Hen-drickson, Covery, Iseke, Davis and Shimoda.

``It's like the world,'' says Johnson. ``We are not as separate as before.''

© 1995 Deseret News Publishing Co.

During the 19th and 20th Centuries, Salt Lake City, Utah, has been the
destination of millions of settlers from elsewhere in N.A. and all over the
world. Those buried in Salt Lake City Cemetery all have family connections
that reach well beyond the metropolis itself. Many of the
Mormon pioneers and their descendants were buried in this cemetery, as were
many westward-bound Protestant and Catholic families.

Good Luck!
Sherry Smit

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  • Re: CITY CEMETARY by "David D. Smith" <>