Monument Square, Lone Fir

Our next adventure takes us back to SE Portland's Lone Fir Cemetery, but we aren't looking at headstones this time. Instead we're taking a look at an obscure war memorial located in the middle of the cemetery. This was built circa 1903 as a Civil War memorial, organized by the Grand Army of the Republic, the main war veterans' organization. As this was not long after the Spanish-American War, the memorial also includes nods to the other conflicts, including, unusually, the Indian Wars. (Although given the date, it was probably only intended to honor the white, not the Indian, side of the conflict.)

Planning for the memorial began in 1901-1902, and it was dedicated on Memorial Day 1903. It wasn't actually complete at dedication, though, as the statue on top had yet to arrive. So a second grand ceremony was held in October for the unveiling of the statue. That article refers to the surrounding area as "Monument Square", and mentions that it was being dedicated or deeded as a public park. I'm not sure what that means, exactly, since PortlandMaps shows the area as legally part of the cemetery, not a separate parcel. The name "Monument Square" seems to have fallen out of use over the next decade, and doesn't occur in the Oregonian after 1916. But as far as I know that's still the legal, official name for the place, so that's what I'm going with as a post title.

Metro's 2008 "Existing Conditions & Recommendations Report" for the cemetery calls the area "War Memorial Park", and describes it:

The cemetery’s 1944 amended plat map designates the area around the Soldiers Memorial as a public park. The existing area of this delineated park contains the classic single monolith Soldier’s Memorial, three donor benches, and a later addition concrete slab that is currently being used for funeral services. The Soldier’s Memorial is made of granite with a bronze statue and bronze plaques. It is in stable condition, although the soil appears to have eroded away at the base, exposing some of the foundation in places.

The memorial was designed by local architect Delos D. Neer, who's best known for a number of historic county courthouses around the state, including the landmark Benton County Courthouse in Corvallis.

Details are sketchy about the statue on top. An article about the design simply mentions that it was bought from an unnamed eastern firm, which created a special model to the city's specifications. So there may or may not be other identical or similar copies out there, and it's hard to be sure because we don't know the firm or artist.

I had previously been under the impression this was a Spanish-American War memorial, and I think I've said something to that effect in a couple of earlier posts, I think in the context of marveling at how many Spanish-American War memorials Portland ended up with, like the Soldier Monument in Lownsdale Square, and the Battleship Oregon memorial in Waterfront Park. So I may have to go back and fix those older posts now. I also asserted once that the pair of Ft. Sumter cannons in Lownsdale Square was the only Civil War memorial in town, and obviously that isn't quite true either.

Miscellaneous items concerning the memorial from around the net:

• brief mention in Randol B. Fletcher's Hidden History of Civil War Oregon
• Waymarking page, with GPS coordinates in case you don't want to wander aimlessly around a cemetery looking for the monument.
• A post at Destinations Northwest
• A post at Blogging a Dead Horse

Columbian Cemetery

Since it's late October now, here's a slideshow from NE Portland's Columbian Cemetery, which sits next to I-5, inside the curve of the northbound Columbia Blvd. offramp. It's bordered by noisy roads to the west and south, and industrial warehouses to the north and east, and it's maybe not the most idyllic and restful final resting place out there. As with the Powell Grove Cemetery out at NE 122nd, the cemetery was here first, and then roads and general development encroached from all sides. I haven't come across anything like the Powell Grove legal battle here; maybe the state and county learned their lesson from the earlier conflict and routed I-5 around one side, instead of trying to dig up anyone's ancestors.

It turns out the fancy fence and gate out front are quite new, added sometime after 2006 in conjunction with the widening of the I-5 Columbia Slough Bridge. An environmental assessment for the project described the fence upgrade:

The existing chain-link fencing along the front of the cemetery contains two brick pillars (at the entrance) and a modern metal pipe gate identifying the name and date of the cemetery. This fencing will be replaced with an iron-style fence designed to replicate the appearance of the historic fence. Fragments of the historic fence are available to use as a template. However, for security reasons, the new fence may be taller than the historic fence, which was approximately 3 feet high. A driveway gate that is in keeping with the historic fence design and incorporates the name and date of the cemetery will be installed at the entrance.

I actually dropped by to find an old city boundary marker that a helpful Gentle Reader had sent me a tip about. Unlike Lone Fir, or Greenwood Hills, or the Grand Army of the Republic Cemetery, I gather that in general this spot is not the final resting place of prominent early pioneers or the rich and famous of any era. A chatty volunteer told me about a couple of interesting residents, including a former slave who had moved to Portland after the Civil War (who I was unable to locate), and a gentleman who held Portland Police badge #1 (and who, for some reason, was buried juuuust outside city limits).

I imagine he would have had additional stories to share, but the cemetery's equipment shed had been robbed a few days earlier, and he and another volunteer were busy figuring out the extent of the damage and how to secure the remaining equipment. I am not a superstitious person by any means, but the act of robbing a cemetery just calls out for some sort of nasty cosmic retribution. At minimum, it seems like the perpetrators ought to be cursed to wander the earth as tormented spirits, unable to enjoy a moment's peace until everything they stole is replaced. Even if that means chasing old tractor parts across the globe to a metal recycler in China or somewhere. That would be a good start, at least.

Powell Grove Pioneer Cemetery

The intersection of NE 122nd and Sandy resembles a freeway interchange, with an overpass and cloverleaf ramps between the two streets. If you look closely, inside the curve of one of these ramps is a collection of headstones. This is the tiny one-acre Powell Grove Pioneer Cemetery, which was here first, dating all the way back to 1848. For the first century or so of its existence the surrounding area was rural, and it only appeared in the paper when a new resident arrived.

In December 1949, after a century as a privately run cemetery, relatives of people buried here asked the county to take over maintenance. Undoubtedly this seemed like a great idea at the time, but county ownership may have paved the way for a lengthy court battle that began a few years later.

In 1953, moving to suburbia was the hot new trend, and everyone's favorite downtown stores decided to follow. Fred Meyer proposed a new store at 122nd & Sandy, their first venture outside the downtown core. The intersection was already a busy one, and the announcement envisioned "modernizing" it to provide better access to the new store. The paper described the proposal as the "first decentralization by a major downtown department store", which seems to indicate there weren't any Meier & Frank stores outside downtown then, nor any branches of the other long-vanished department stores that once graced downtown.

Or it would have been the first such store if the plan had gone through quickly. However discussions dragged on for a few years as the parties tried to work out the details, including road access to the store site. In 1957 the county announced a plan to move the cemetery elsewhere, to make room for a nice modern freeway-style intersection: "Dead Asked to Move Over - Cemetery In Way of Plan to Expedite Traffic". Relatives of the deceased weren't so keen on the idea, and a courtroom battle ensued over the next few years. An August 1960 article about needed repairs at the cemetery mentions the ongoing court fight, as well as a new proposal to include the cemetery inside one of the cloverleaf ramps, which is what eventually ended up happening.

It didn't happen immediately, though. The court battle continued, and in November 1961 the county and local boosters tentatively won the fight to move the cemetery elsewhere. Several months after that, an article referred to the "present site" of the cemetery, indicating nothing had changed at that point, and then... nothing. It's as if they went to all the trouble to win the right to dig people up and move them, and then dropped the matter without actually going through with it. I can't even find any references saying they decided not to do it after all; they just stopped talking about it, and that was the end of the matter.

A few of you longtime Gentle Reader(s) might remember this photo from another post back in 2008, before I'd really gotten this blogging-about-places-and-things schtick down properly. Who am I kidding, nobody remembers trivial stuff like that. It's just that somehow it feels like I should disclose it when I reuse an old photo for a new post. I'm not sure why; it just feels more sort of integrity-esque this way.

Grand Army of the Republic Cemetery

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A few photos of Portland's Grand Army of the Republic Cemetery, in the West Hills right next to Greenwood Hills.

The grandiose, George Lucas-esque name comes from the Grand Army of the Republic, a fraternal organization of Union veterans of the Civil War. (The Wikipedia article claims that Lucas did rip off the name, big surprise there). I do so hate to ramble on about zombies all the time, but it is Halloween, you know. And if (as I mentioned in my Burnside Bridge post a while back) we're ever besieged by horrific Confederate zombies, the next logical step would to raise these guys up somehow, and send them once more unto the breach. Honestly, I have no idea why people accuse me of thinking in B-movie plots all the time. I'm really just trying to help, honest. Someday you'll all thank me. I'm sure of it.

Anyway, the GAR vanished with the last Union veteran, and although there are successor groups of Sons & Daughters of Union Veterans, they're pretty small and obscure groups. Because this is a Northern state, and we got over the Civil War a long, long time ago, unlike certain other parts of the country I might name. So these days Metro owns and cares for the place instead, and they have an info page about it. Graveyards.com and Find-A-Grave have a few more photos, and there are a few more in someone's Flickr photoset.

There's a pedestal here that once held a statue of some sort, but it's apparently been gone for quite some time. Metal thieves, probably, or rabid Civil War memorabilia collectors. So if you're on eBay or Craigslist and run across something that really looks like it goes here, let Metro know, ok? (It'd help if I knew what the statue was supposed to look like, but I'm afraid I don't.)

Greenwood Hills

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Just in time for Halloween, here are a few photos from Greenwood Hills Cemetery, a circa-1851 pioneer cemetery in the West Hills, south of downtown Portland. I think visiting on a foggy fall morning worked out a lot better than it did on the recent trip to Nansen Summit. I mean, I suppose cemetery photos with fog and autumn leaves and cobwebs can be, I dunno, a bit formulaic. But still, I think some of them turned out ok.

The monuments here are generally not as extravagant as some you'd see over at Lone Fir, for example, and it's not full of famous people. But Greenwood Hills is kind of interesting in that for a time it was a Masonic cemetery, and a lot of the headstones carry Masonic symbols. I'm told that when one joins up, one swears a rather gory oath not to divulge the secrets of the society, something about having one's throat cut, tongue cut out, etc., etc., rather than spill the beans. And when you move up the ranks, the oath gets even gorier, or so I've heard. History doesn't record whether any of that actually happened to anyone here, but if you happen to be near Greenwood Hills when the zombie apocalypse comes, you can be sure it won't be pretty. Although they might leave you alone if you know the secret handshake, assuming they still have hands.

There's more about Greenwood Hills at Graveyards.com and Find-a-Grave.com. Seriously, those are both for real, I swear I'm not making this up.

See also "So, You're Dead Already" at Blogging a Dead Horse, and someone's extensive Flickr photoset, and a page of transcribed headstone inscriptions.

Somewhere here is the recently restored headstone of a an early 20th century Bosnian Muslim immigrant who died in 1951. I think that's what the story says; the Google translation is a bit rough. If you read Bosnian, or Serbo-Croatian, or whatever the language is called these days, the original article is here.

And no old cemetery is complete without a ghost story (scroll down a bit to find the Greenwood Hills tale). Ok, so if you're as jaded as I am, you're probably going, "oh, a ghost story about a graveyard, now that's a first". But it's a fun tale, with various spooky goings-on, and a bit of history thrown in. Now, I have to say that nothing weird happened when I was there (granted, this was during the day), and the only things stirring here were a few people walking their dogs and chatting on mobile phones. And I certainly don't really believe any of this stuff anyway. But still, what's the point of sneering at ghost stories on Halloween? Where's the fun in that?

Fort Rock Cemetery

Some photos from the cemetery next to Fort Rock, out in eastern Oregon.

I sort of fixated on the "flags and headstones in the remote desert" angle, and it just didn't occur to me to get a closer look at any of the headstones. Believe it or not. Someone else did exactly that, though, and put together a fascinating Flickr photoset about it. A few more photos of the cemetery appear in this Waymarking gallery. All those photos make me wish I'd taken the time to look around more. Although if I had, I probably wouldn't have had the time to drop by Hole-in-the-Ground. In hindsight, that may be what I ought to have done. Oh, well. You live and learn.

Lone Fir

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So here are some of those photos of Lone Fir Cemetery [google map] I mentioned a few days back. I'd never been there before, and I've been meaning to visit for a while now. The idea occurred to me again around Halloween, but it didn't seem right to go just then, since I was going out of historical curiosity, not just to be morbid or out of some juvenile thrill-seeking impulse. Visiting on Halloween just seemed kind of silly and melodramatic. Plus on Halloween, or on the day after, I figured there'd probably be too many people of the living variety there; it'd be like going to the mall on the day after Thanksgiving or something. And in any case, on Halloween it was cold and clear and sunny outside, and I'd had the idea that bad weather would be better for b+w photos. Well, it was raining quite a bit when I visited, and the color photos turned out way better than the b+w ones. Have I mentioned yet that I'm not a professional photographer?

Lone Fir is one of the oldest cemeteries in the area, and Metro administers it under their pioneer cemetery program, even though it's still accepting new residents. Many of the newest arrivals are immigrants from Russia and Ukraine, with long Cyrillic inscriptions and elaborate designs on distinctive polished black headstones.

We Portlanders are a reserved and rather squeamish bunch, and we don't have the same attitude towards death as people do in, say, New Orleans or Charleston. We don't talk about it, we don't think about it, and we avoid places associated with it whenever we possibly can. And naturally we don't admit we're doing any of these things, because that would be talking about it, which we don't do. So even though I've lived here most of my life I knew absolutely nothing about Lone Fir until just over a year ago, when the Chinese graveyard controversy cropped up.




The next photo is of the southwest corner of Lone Fir, or of where it was until 1948. At that point the county decided it needed space for a new office building, and what better place to build than on top of the Chinese corner of the old cemetery? (No, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me either, but those were peculiar and highly bigoted times.) So they dug up everyone in the area and plunked an ugly office building on the spot. Recently the county decided it didn't need the building or the land after all, so they tore the building out and were making ready to sell the land. Then it turned out people had been careless back in '48 and had neglected to dig a few people up. They'd been there all that time, under the parking lot. (I'm sure I've seen a movie or two that started out that way.) So now the talk is that there'll be a memorial of some kind. But right now there's no money for that, so the spot currently looks like this.




The statue in the above picture is part of a war memorial tucked away in the center of Lone Fir. The four sides of the base dedicate it to veterans of the Civil War, the Mexican War, the Spanish-American War, and wars against the Indians. We have a surprising number of monuments and markers concerning the Spanish-American War, considering what a brief and relatively bloodless conflict it was. There's a bunch of stuff in the Plaza Blocks, and the Battleship Oregon mast in Waterfront Park, and I understand there's a rather obscure marker near the Veterans Hospital, south of OHSU, and this monument. And if we have four, there are probably even more scattered around the area that I'm unfamiliar with. I've been meaning to do a post about war memorials in the city, but that's going to require a bit of additional research.




Another photo looking across the grounds. Parts of Lone Fir, such as this spot, look rather sparsely "settled". That is, until you realize that of the 30,000+ people here, an estimated 10,000 are either lost or unmarked, due to time, weather, vandals, or simply poor record-keeping.

The interior of Lone Fir is basically invisible from the street on three sides of the place. On the sides facing Stark and Morrison Streets (the north and south sides, respectively), all you see is a high, blank, gray retaining wall topped by a chain link fence, with barbed wire on top. (And yes, that means many of the residents here are in fact above street level, despite being underground.) On the west side, there's a row of houses between 20th avenue and the cemetery, so you can catch occasional glimpses between the houses of headstones backing up to someone's back yard.

There are one or two small signs on the perimeter fence informing you the entrance is somewhere on Morrison St., but even if you're on Morrison it's tough to find the entrance. If you scroll up and look at that photo of where the Chinese part of the cemetery used to be, you'll see another chain link fence in the distance, separating the old parking lot from the cemetery proper. The main entrance is simply a gate in that fence. By all rights, Lone Fir ought to have an ancient, elaborate, Gothic wrought iron fence, and an entrance arch of stone or brick. But it doesn't, and as far as I know it never did.



This last photo is a detail of the tombstone of James B. and Elizabeth Stephens, early pioneers in the area. The back of this stone holds the inscription "Here we lie by consent after 57 years, 2 months, 2 days sojourning on earth awaiting nature's immutable laws to return us to the elements of which we were formed". Which to me is a touching, and refreshingly nonreligious, sentiment.

Clearly I'm not the only person who feels that way. You can't see it in this photo, but above each portrait someone had recently laid a single red rose.

Next door is the oldest grave in the cemetery, J.B. Stephens's father Emmor, who died in 1846. Oregon wouldn't even become a state for another three years. To me, what's even more striking is that the elder Stephens was born in 1777. It's quite rare to see any mention of a year starting with '17' in this part of the world, in any context.

Other info & resources:

• Friends of Lone Fir
  
• Portland Public Art blog
  
• A large number of photos tagged with "lonefircemetery" on Flickr. Most of these are better than my photos, but in my defense it was absolutely pouring rain when I visited.
  
• A Willamette Week article about Lone Fir and a couple of other old graveyards in the area.
  
• A recent Portland Tribune story
  
• An old post about the place by B!x
  
• Lone Fir's page at Graveyards.com. Yes, there really is such a thing. Gives GPS coordinates of the place and everything, and has a photo of the nondescript main entrance.