Evergreen Cemetery, Los Angeles
| Details | |
|---|---|
| Established | 1877 |
| Location | 204 N. Evergreen Avenue Los Angeles, California |
| Coordinates | 34°02′25″N 118°11′52″W / 34.0402899°N 118.1978499°WCoordinates: 34°02′25″N 118°11′52″W / 34.0402899°N 118.1978499°W |
| Type | Private |
| Size | 67 acres (27 ha) |
| Number of graves | >300,000 |
| Find a Grave | Evergreen Memorial Park & Crematory |
| The Political Graveyard | Evergreen Memorial Park & Crematory |
Evergreen Memorial Park & Crematory is a cemetery in the East Side neighborhood of Boyle Heights, Los Angeles, California.
Evergreen has several prominent individuals of historical Southern California on its grounds. Many pioneers are interred here, names such as Bixby, Coulter, Hollenbeck, Lankershim, Van Nuys, and Workman. There are politicians, notably former Mayors of Los Angeles. The Garden of the Pines section of the cemetery is a memorial to Japanese Issei pioneers.
Established on August 23, 1877, Evergreen is the oldest, and one of the largest, extant cemeteries in the city with over 300,000 interments. The section near 1st and Lorena streets was at one time a potter's field.
Evergreen is notable for never having banned African-Americans from being buried at the cemetery and has sections for Armenians, Japanese, early white settlers, and a large section of Mexican graves.
In return for a zoning variance to allow the cemetery, the founders of Evergreen gave the City of Los Angeles a 9-acre (36,000 m2) parcel of the proposed cemetery in 1877 for use as an indigent graveyard, often referred as a "Potter's field." Ownership of the indigent cemetery passed from the City to the County of Los Angeles in 1917. At the time, it was clear the potter's field would have burial space for only a few more years. By 1924, burial space in the potter's field was exhausted and the county built a crematorium at the site, on the corner of Lorena and 1st streets, and began to cremate its indigent deceased.
Evergreen Cemetery purchased most of the 9-acre (36,000 m2) potter's field from the county in 1964. It then prepared the newly recovered parcel for burials by covering it with 8 feet (2.4 m) of compacted soil. Only the crematorium was retained by the county. In 2007, the cremated remains of over 1700 unclaimed bodies were buried in the cemetery.
Until the Civil Rights era, racism barred the Chinese from burying their dead in most cemeteries including Evergreen. Before 1922 and the founding of the Chinese Cemetery, the only place that allowed burial of Chinese persons was the city's potter's field. Unlike white indigents, who were buried at no charge, the Chinese had to pay US$10 (HK$78) to be interred.
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Wikipedia