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City trying to determine what remains in cemetery |
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Written by DeadGirl
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Wednesday, 04 August 2004 |
Aug 4, 2004
By Jennifer Lloyd
Times Snohomish County bureau
For six years, a set of buried remains has sat unidentified in the Old Snohomish Cemetery while the city of Snohomish has tried to remove the cemetery designation from the land to make way for a new senior-center building.
The city hopes to have the cemetery, which was platted in 1895, "decertified" within the year.
Using radar to detect burial sites, archaeologists hired by the city have scanned much of the 1.3-acre lot. Only an 11-space parking lot next to the Snohomish Senior Center remains to be inspected.
Archaeologists found one complete set of remains in 1998, which indicated that not all the remains had been removed from the area as presumed. Another site could hold a second set of remains.
According to a 1998 Snohomish County Superior Court decision, the city must develop a plan to inspect the area and rebury the remains before the court will remove the cemetery designation. The city is meeting with two archaeological firms, including Northwest Archaeological Associates, which performed the initial inspections, to develop the plan within the next two months.
The city began searching for remains on the property in 1997.
Ruth Moore and her daughter, Carolynn Crawford, opposed the city in court, wanting to see the cemetery left intact. Moore's great-grandparents are buried on the property.
Since the senior center expanded in 1996, she said, she can no longer find where her family members are buried. Her great-grandparents, John and Lydia Low, were buried on the property in the late 1800s and early 1900s, and Ruth Moore had been able to locate their grave sites by the base of their joint headstone at the Old Snohomish Cemetery. But Moore said some bases were moved, and she lost track of where her relatives are buried.
"We went to court so they would have to dig up the graves and properly move them to another cemetery," said her husband, Wayne Moore. "They were just going to build over top of the graves. The thing has never been treated like a historic cemetery."
Located at 171 Cypress Ave. and across Second Street at 205 Cypress Ave., the cemetery was the burial site of pioneers and Native Americans. Some estimate about 300 were once buried at the cemetery; the last recorded burial took place in 1923.
In the 1940s, the state Department of Transportation divided the cemetery in two to build Highway 2 — which has since been rerouted — and contracted with another local cemetery crew to exhume more than 100 graves.
But working without cemetery records, they left at least one set of remains behind.
"So even back when they went out there, plots, markers and records weren't available," Nelson said. "They did the work to the standards of 1947, which probably weren't the best standards."
In the late 1990s, an interest in building a youth center at 171 Cypress prompted the city to seek removal of the cemetery designation. The property across the street will retain the designation.
In 1998, a county Superior Court judge ordered an archaeological review to remove any human remains.
"We thought obviously that this had been done a long time ago," Snohomish Mayor Liz Loomis said about the reburial of the remains.
After the plan is created, archaeologists will scan the parking lot for remains using ground-penetrating radar. Then the city will exhume and attempt to identify the remains. With the help of a cultural anthropologist or archaeologist, they hope to determine whether the buried were Native Americans. If so, their remains will be turned over to the Tulalip Tribes, according to Nelson.
"From oral history, we understand that there are tribal remains there, so we are diligently working with them to do what's appropriate," said state Rep. John McCoy, D-Marysville, who is also general manager of the Tulalips' Quil Ceda Village.
Any unidentified remains will be reinterred at the nearby GAR (Grand Army of the Republic) Cemetery in Snohomish.
The process will cost about $170,000, Nelson said.
Once the cemetery designation is removed, the Snohomish Senior Center plans to construct a building on the site to house its programs. The youth center that was originally planned became the Boys & Girls Club, which opened last year on Second Street.
"We currently occupy an 1,800-square-foot vintage home," said Karen Charnell, the senior center's executive director. "We hope to increase capacity to [5,000] or 6,000 square feet."
Several low-income-housing units for seniors may be built on the property. The Tulalips, seniors and the city hope to develop a memorial there, too.
The lengthy process to remove the cemetery designation is a result of the need to respect the dead, Loomis said.
"When you're dealing with loved ones of other people, you have absolutely got to do it right," she said. "This isn't something that you just rush out and do."
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/snohomishcountynews/2001995718_cemetery04n.html |
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