It may have been simple maintenance, turning under weeds that had grown high around old tombstones. But two people who live near Elbow Creek Cemetery have a different word for it: desecration.

The grounds of the 150-year-old cemetery north of Visalia looked like a newly disked field late Monday. Rocky Foster and Nathan Dotson watched as someone they said was from the Visalia Cemetery District plowed and scraped the four-acre site. Ground-level placards and grave markers were destroyed or covered with dirt, and some above-ground tombstones were missing.

Area residents have relatives buried at the cemetery, located on a dirt road north of Avenue 328 and east of Road 132.
Now they may not be able to find their burial plots, Foster said.
"Those poor people are going to be livid," he said.
They have good reason, Dotson said.
"The county has no records of who's buried where," he said.
Foster, a veterinarian who raises quarter horses and bucking bulls for rodeos, lives next door to the cemetery. He said he and Dotson confronted the worker as he was plowing the grounds.
Foster said he pleaded with the worker to stop and that a maintenance supervisor for the cemetery district showed up.
Foster said he argued with someone named "Ron" that cemeteries are "hallowed" sites protected by state law.
Foster and Dotson said they did not know the man's last name.
A woman who answered the phone at the Visalia Cemetery District offices in Visalia Tuesday said that the district maintains Elbow Creek Cemetery and has an employee named "Ron."
She said Dona Shores, district manager, is on vacation until next week. Messages left for "Ron" were not returned.
Foster said the district employee told him the ground was too "rough to mow."
He said he also was told that the district wanted to get rid of weeds ahead of the rainy season.
"But the reason the weeds were overgrown is because no one takes care of the place," Dotson said.
At one point, Foster said, the debate turned into a "hollering and screaming" match.
Dotson, who lives about a mile away from the cemetery, confirmed that the discussion got more than a little heated.
"It started to get ugly," Dotson said, "but I tried to calm everyone down."
Afterward, Dotson said, he found "hundreds of shards and pieces" of broken headstones and grave markers at the cemetery. The worker first plowed the field and then used a grader to level the ground, he said.
"All the stones were broken up pretty good," Dotson said.
Several headstones were piled in a heap, along with dirt and weeds and other debris, at one end of the field.
Foster said he salvaged some of the headstones and set them aside.
A lot of the above-ground tombstones were "knocked down and destroyed," Dotson said.
"But the prominent ones are still there," he said.
Foster said he has offered many times to mow the cemetery and otherwise care for the site. But he said the district always has rejected his offers.

Michael Miyamoto

Elbow Creek Cemetery is just north of Avenue 328 and east of Road 132.


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I copied and pasted this directly from the Visalia Times Delta website visaliatimesdelta.com

Our County's founders were buried here. And someone disturbed their final resting place....

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In Colorado Springs, Colorado; developers wanted to build houses on a hill overlooking the Garden of the Gods. Also on that hill was "Pioneer Cemetery" containing about 200 graves of Colorado's earliest settlers, including some of my ancestors. El Paso County promised to "respect" the survivors and "move" the remains to Evergreen Cemetery; several miles away. They promised to move the graves and headstones and keep records. However; in the 1960's my grandfather found the opposite to be true. The County moved less than 50 graves and markers, and kept NO records. NO ONE could account for the remaining 150 (or more) graves, but developers reported digging up human remains during excavation for house foundations and swimming pools into the late 1960's. The County kept insisting they moved every grave and to prove them wrong, my grandfather went "prospecting" with a metal detector. He located several "possibilities" and even dug up one grave containing remains, for which he was arrested. He was never convicted of "grave-robbing" because the County STILL insisted they moved all the graves. As late as 1998, El Paso County Colorado still cannot account for the whereabouts of all the remains and grave markers from "Pioneer Cemetery", which is now a public park and baseball field.

I think it is pretty damning when in an age where we CAN account for all of these graves, and can even identify quite a few, very few people bother!

I've read the story of the Pioneer Cemetary before, and in my opinion it is a perfect example of Public officials catering to land grabbing developers, hell-bent on making money and not giving a fat rats butt about how they gain those $$$!

I'd love to know what ever became of respect for our dead? Respect for the ones who came here, blazed the trail that created the environs in which we live? Respect for all those people accomplished.

I'm going out there later this week, to compare the photos I have here to what is left behind. Before I say much more, I NEED to know how much damamge was really done.

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I am glad to see there are others like me who view cemetarys as history.
They should be a place of honor not forgotten relem untill the land is needed to build houses and playgrounds.
Guyslady please share the photos with us.

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I am a Diamond in the making. I have undergone Heat and pressure. I have been chisled and cut. I am now in the hardest phase the wet grinding. Soon I will shine.
Pamela Earp



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