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All the United States California San Francisco United States Marine Hospital Cemetery

United States Marine Hospital Cemetery

This sailor's boneyard was lost under a parking lot for decades before being rediscovered.

San Francisco, California

Added By
Loren Rhoads
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The monument to the sailors buried here.   Photo by Loren Rhoads
The monument to the sailors buried here.   Photo by Loren Rhoads
The entrance to Marine Cemetery Vista.   Photo by Loren Rhoads
The trailhead to the cemetery marker.   Photo by Loren Rhoads
  MtnLady / Atlas Obscura User
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About

Despite holding the bodies of hundreds of sailors, the United States Marine Hospital Cemetery was lost for decades, a victim of the hospital's own growth.

The Marine Hospital of San Francisco was established in 1875 to provide medical support for the coastal port. Then in 1881, due to a San Francisco law forbidding burial in the city limits, the hospital (which was located on the military Presidio, fell outside of this statute) built a small cemetery for sailors and seamen who were too poor to afford their own burial and had no family to be shipped back to. By the 1930's, the graveyard's wooden, white-washed crosses had begun to disappear or fall over and the cemetery was forgotten and used as a dump by locals. In 1969 the Veteran's Administration finally covered the site with a parking lot. The graves went unnoticed for two decades until the military finally began the sale of the Presidio in 1989. 

After the cemetery was rediscovered, archaeologists found that around 600 bodies had been buried on the site and subsequently covered by over 10 feet of trash and paving. Even after the graveyard was discovered, it took until 2011 for the National Park Service (who now attend to the Presidio grounds) to install a memorial plaque. The granite plaque is laid into the ground at the end of terminus of a trail in a small wooden enclosure called the "Military Cemetery Vista." 

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Cemeteries Military History Hospitals Military

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Added By

MorbidLoren

Edited By

hrnick, EricGrundhauser, MtnLady

  • hrnick
  • EricGrundhauser
  • MtnLady

Published

October 31, 2012

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Sources
  • http://www.presidio.gov/about/archaeology/Pages/public-health-service-district-marine-cemetery.aspx#.UoKdkJTuU0N
  • http://cemeterytravel.com/2012/11/14/cemetery-of-the-week-83-united-states-marine-hospital-cemetery/
United States Marine Hospital Cemetery
50 Moraga Ave
San Francisco, California, 94129
United States
37.789891, -122.473408
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