Golfing On Top Of Graves

The 2009 Presidents Cup golfing event arrived in San Francisco this week with Tiger, Furyk, Cink, Leonard, Mickelson and a host of celebrities the likes of Michael Jordan. President Bill Clinton is on hand to help kick off the event which is being held at Harding Park in San Francsco.

The other city Golf Course is in Lincoln Park and as you San Francisco History buffs know, was once the burial grounds of the city's poor. As a matter of fact, many these early San Franciscans were so poor that their funerary arrangements were paid for and handled by a city public works department. Yes class, Lincoln Park where Lincoln Park Golf Course sits, was once San Francisco's Potter's Field.

While alive they were poor spiritually and financially. Once dead they were given a late 1800's style of transport (trolley or buggy) to this San Francisco land's end, to allow their poor soul a final resting place where nothing but salty sea breezes, sand dunes and the sound of the ocean crashing against the rocky shore could possibly disturb their state of death.

Golden Gate Cemetery 1868-1909 (aka Potter's Field) was one of a number of cemeteries within city limits at that time. You'd be amazed at some of the locations in SF that once housed the dead below ground. Chances are if you live in the city you probably shop, attend school, exercise or live on top of what was once a cemetery.

The city of San Francisco has a unique distinction of being the only city in the world that conducted a mass cemetery relocation project that in effect removed all graves to places outside of the city's limits. Most were relocated to Colma. The reason was most likely greed for property. As of today there are only two cemeteries that remain in San Francisco; Mission Delores and the Presidio.

The city in the early 1900's, especially following the 1906 earthquake was rapidly expanding westward and land was in high demand. Burials were banned in San Francisco in 1902. The subject of cemetery removal had been brewing in San Francisco for years and I suppose the catastrophic earthquake provided the kick in the pants to stop talking and get busy digging.

They say where there's tragedy there's opportunity, so I suppose a few fellows with deep pockets and plenty of leisure time paid the city to evict the dead bodies of these poor soulless western pioneers so that a fully functional golf course could be developed. Golf at that time was still considered a game to be played on linksland as near to the ocean as possible. Golden Gate Cemetery was just about as close to the ocean as one could get without falling off the cliffs of Land's End and into the Pacific.

In wrapping up this story of rich man poor man I must share something with you. Atop the hill where the golf course sprawls below today lies the Legion of Honor museum. The museum opened in 1924. In 1993 while excavating beneath the museum for a retrofit project there were found thousands of skeletal remains in graves. 700 were relocated to a mass grave site in San Mateo. Its estimated that as many as 11,000 could still be buried there. An old resident of San Francisco remembers that when laying the foundation for the museum in 1924 there were skeletons from burials found. Those skeletons were supposedly dumped into a cornerstone of the museum and sealed up. The resident did not remember which corner of the museum housed the remains.

University of San Francisco
Civic Center Plaza
Sears/Toys R Us
California Pacific (formerly Children's Hospital)
Dolores Park

These are just some of today's locations where once laid the dead of San Francisco. Lincoln Park is the only known one of these former cemeteries that still houses the dead underground.

Coincidentally I had a chance to attend the viewing of a film that talked about what happened to the cemeteries in San Francisco just last week at the main library. The film is titled "A Second Final Rest: The History of San Francisco's Lost Cemeteries" by Trina Lopez.

A must see for any San Francisco history buff.

For more San Francisco Cemetary information check out some of these interesting sites:

http://www.sanfranciscocemeteries.com/index.html

http://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Cemeteries_at_foot_of_Lone_Mountain

http://www.sfgolfchampionship.com/history_courses.html

http://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Old_Cemeteries_in_the_City

http://www.sfgenealogy.com/sf/history/hcmcit.htm

http://americahurrah.com/SanFrancisco/MunicipalReports/GoldenGateCemetery.htm