Video: 2011-07-21 - Nevada County Cemeteries with Dennis Casella and Gary Plunket (62 minutes)

Full Transcript of the Video:

[ Inaudible ] [ Inaudible ] [ Inaudible ] >> Okay, so we have a couple of thank yous to Mary Hannah and Gage. I'm for reading your questions tonight. And of course, James Ketchum for doing the movie. And I think, remember the raffle goes to the end, we'll draw, so if you haven't brought the raffle to get to me, why don't you shut it back? And that money goes towards the river. And then I think my father-in-law wanted to say something real quick now, and then I'm going to get help. What I want to talk about is the Cornish connection that we have with the Twin Cities of Penzance and Bodman and Nevada City. This year, some of us men from the Grass Valley Male Voice Choir are going to near Madison, Wisconsin, Mineral Point, and put on a musical drama on the cry of Tim this Sunday at 2 o'clock at the Nevada City Methodist Church. We will be doing a preview of that. This particular music drama has never been performed in the United States, and it's only been performed once in Falmouth in 1998, I believe. In Cornwall, in Falmouth. So I just wanted to announce that. Thank you. And we're going to do the drama. All right. So I'm Dennis Gosela. I've worked for the county for a long time, and I know a lot of you in here. I'm also a life member of the Nevada County Historical Society and have been for about 20 years. But in my current incarnation, I was just elected last night as the chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Nevada Cemetery District. And so our presentation tonight is largely about the cemetery district and the 28 cemeteries that we either have or are in the process of acquiring. I'll talk first about those that we are acquiring. We have the Deer Creek Cemetery, which we just opened in May of last year, and that's on just up from Boulder Street. Our second cemetery is Elster Memorial, which is off of Gary Helton. And as Mr. McCourtney wrote about six miles out, we're opening that in October of this year. And it will specifically have a veterans section and will be displaying all the flags of the military services. We're also willing to designate other sections in Elster Memorial for other groups such as lions, marauding, squannas, whatever. So if you have an interest in having a dedicated area in that cemetery, certainly talk to one of the other board members or myself. The other cemetery or the third cemetery we are in the process of acquiring is Cherokee Township. And that's right near the entrance to Inanda. We are in the final stages of that. We should have a deed signed within the next month or so. And now I'll talk about the really good news. We are now in the higher cemetery in Nevada City. The Cemetery District Board made an offer to the city of Nevada City back about nine months ago to take over and operate that cemetery as part of the district. We then ran into a problem when we were told Nevada City doesn't own it. We can prove that because we found the deed two days ago. It was your historical society bulletin that gave us one of the clues that that cemetery was in fact a bad city. But then I went to City Hall and I looked through Burl Robinson's file back in 1974 and there was a story in the San Francisco Chronicle that said that Nevada City had reacquired Pioneer Cemetery recently. Well, what is recently to a newspaper reporter? Kind of scary. So I went to the library and I looked at all of newspaper articles from 1974 looking for some indication that Nevada City City Council had done something. It wasn't there. So I said, all right, we've got an article that says that they did published in San Francisco in October of 1974. So I'm going to go back to the city council minutes from 73 forward. And in November of 1973, there was council action to accept the grant deed and record it. Well, now we know that there's a grant deed and it's been recorded. But where is it? So we went into the inner workings of City Hall and through file cabinets and we found a file that said old grant deeds. And in old grant deeds about halfway through was the deed to Pioneer Cemetery. So we had affirmed about a month ago our offer to Nevada City to take over the cemetery and operate it. So it's now back in our legal council in Nevada City's legal council hands to put together the agreement and give a grant deed to the cemetery district. So that took us months to find that. But we finally did. So I want to talk about Nevada Cemetery District. We were established in 1942 by a vote of the people of Nevada County. So as such, we are a tax agency. Now taxes, property taxes, only bring us about a third of our operating budget. The other comes from sale of plots, niches, scattering gardens, various other things that we sell. In 1946, the district boundaries were expanded and again in 2006, they were expanded again. And I was involved in the 2006 expansion. What that did was to bring Nevada City, the city of Grass Valley and the South County corridor, Altus, Sierra and the Lake of the Pines into the cemetery district. Because up to that time, they had not been in the district and you could not be buried in a Nevada Cemetery District cemetery. So with the exception of the town of Truckee, they have one cemetery in Truckee. All of the other 28 cemeteries that are public cemeteries belong to the Nevada Cemetery District. There's a five member board of trustees appointed by the county board of supervisors. I'd like to point out that one of the other trustees is in the audience, Clarence Potter, Pete Stan. Clarence is the newest addition to the board of trustees. We have one trustee that's been there since 1991. We have three full time employees and one three core time employee that go the rounds, if you will, maintaining the various cemeteries that we have. We also have a contracted secretary and our annual budget is right at half a million dollars, five hundred thousand dollars. We've talked about the Truckee Cemetery District, our district office. Most of you in this room would be familiar with the old HEW building. We are right behind the HEW building and we're monitoring very carefully what becomes of that building. We would like to have made an offer to acquire that building and to place a mausoleum there, but it's just way beyond our financial capability to do that. We have 13 heritage natural cemeteries and a lot of people ask us, well, what is a natural heritage cemetery? The definition is very easy. If there's no grass, it is an old cemetery where they didn't plant grass. Our newest cemeteries are full lawn cemeteries and have ossuaries and columnarians and scattering gardens and so on. But the old cemeteries, the board has made a decision to keep them as they were at the time that they were established. So in the case of Pioneer Cemetery, we're probably going to put a walking path through there. We may add a column, a niche column, if you will, if there's space to do that. But otherwise, we keep our cemeteries as they were. We have nine inactive cemeteries. Those are cemeteries where they are known or suspected to be fully occupied. I hope that's referred to. There are no more available plots in them. So who can be buried in the Nevada County Cemetery? Residents of Nevada County or taxpayers within the county. So a person who is a taxpayer but resides elsewhere can be in our cemetery. Any resident of Nevada County can be also. And that's because you pay taxes to support the district. So Gary, you have been following me. I'm sorry. Pick me up to Deer Creek. I was supposed to use this. I've never used this before. Okay, so Deer Creek is located on Red Dog Road in Nevada City. So as you're going up Boulder Street, as you leave Boulder Street, as you look to your left, that is the new Deer Creek Cemetery. We have full-body and cremation in ground plots. So if you want to be buried in the ground but you also want to be cremated, then we have plots for that purpose. We have a cremation ditch column. We have a scattering garden where your remains can be scattered in a garden environment. And we also have an ossuary for cremated remains. And an ossuary is an underground structure where the cremates are placed in that underground structure. Next one, Gary. We have 200 full-body plots, 450 double cremation plots, and 60 double cremation niches. If you haven't been out there to see it, it is worth going. It is absolutely a beautiful cemetery. And Elster Memorial, when it is finished, will be very similar to this one. So, as I said, we opened in May of 2010. Let's go to the next slide. Before and after, that's the niche column. Scattering garden, ossuary. So we don't have that before and after on that one. Okay. So there are 255 public cemetery districts in California. That cemetery district ranks first in the number of cemeteries within the district, 28, and we get all of our plans completed. We are first in the area covered, 695 square miles out of the 920 square miles in Nevada County. We are 125th in the number of interments annually, about 65, and we are 100th in the number of acres. I suspect if we acquire these additional cemeteries that we're working on, that we will in fact be greater than 100th. So with that, I'm going to have Gary, who is our district manager, come up and talk about some of our specific cemeteries in that number of 28. This is a full house. And this is a great. . . My name is Jerry Quunker. I'm the district manager for the Nevada Cemetery District. Half of my life I've spent in cemeteries. I'm turning 59 next month, and half of over half of my life I've been with the district 32 years. Half of my life I've been spent in the cemetery. I'm going to talk about some of the things that. . . some of the cemeteries that we have. . . Let's see if it works. We're going to back. This is our sign up at the HEW building. And I'm going to talk about that cemetery. A lot of people don't know it's there. And this is the Nevada County Hospital Cemetery. And this is. . . the hospital was built in 1867. Somewhere around there. It's been remodeled at least 20 times. We have about 2. 2 acres that is right in the. . . or a little island in that 13 or 14 acres complex of the HEW building on Willow Valley Road. And we have 2. 2 acres. And the reason we got that is because back when Dr. Hunt, when he opened up the hospital at the county, they're on Willow Valley Road. They had a lot of people that were passing away. There were miners that were coming out from the east coast. And they were. . . they would die in the hospital from mining injuries. Influence, I've heard, was big. There was a couple other chronic illnesses that went through. And I heard at one point they were dying. 15 people at day were passing away. And they needed to place a barrier. So what they did is they went right behind the hospital. Instead of taking them over to Pine Grove, they would go right behind the hospital there. And they would dig these. . . they'd have the inmates and dig these big trenches. And then they would bury these remains of these people. And the only information they had was Dr. Hunt's log. And what he did was he'd write their name down, Joe Smith. And he didn't have any more information than that. The reason they died and then the date. And if they had an age, so be it. What they would do is they'd take these little red ones. Let's see if we can get to one. I'm going to come back. So I just want to get to this to show you because I want to stop at this and tell you about this cemetery. I'll come back to this stuff. Okay, right here is the cemetery behind the hospital right next to our office building on Little Valley Road. And in there, there probably wasn't any trees. They dug those big trenches. And this was all. . . this was their headstone. And on the headstone, these little markers, they would put a number up on top. It would be. . . I guess they probably carved. . . probably hand carved it. And the numbers went from one to five hundred. Because we found approximately twelve of them. And we found four, ten, we found six, seven, twenty-three. There was a few scattered through. So one of my plans is to restorate the cemetery. There's five hundred people in there buried. And we do have the book on that. I'll list those names. I'll go back. The only headstone. The only headstone, there's one headstone out of five hundred people that's at the county hospital cemetery. And this was it. And I took a picture of it. 1880, eight. And below it, right here, is the number of his marker. And so if he hadn't put it, if somebody, a family member, hadn't have known this information, all he would have gotten would have been that wooden stake. Sorry I jumped on it. But when I get to that point, I want to talk about it. I just go. We have some very interesting cemeteries. I imagine a lot of you have been to a lot of them. Here's our crew. We have one more in addition. Scott Thomas, Chrissy Huskin, and myself. This was several years ago. I'm sorry. I'm just going back to where I was. OK, here we go. This is during the springtime. We're cleaning up the Loney Sanford Cemetery. And this is the location out on the Courtney Road of our new cemetery. The Elster Memorial Cemetery is right behind adjacent to this cemetery, to the Loney Sanford Ranch Cemetery. Right behind it, we had donated some acreage from David and Judith Elster. And they gave us 5. 37 acres that we've developed into two phases. And this is our old, this is the old cemetery at the Loney Ranch. Clear Creek Cemetery on Courtney Road. This is coming up from the South County on the Courtney Road, right next to the Clear Creek Schoolhouse. Most of the families down on this area, the Loney Sanford Ranch Cemetery, as you're coming into towards the fairgrounds, this is Clear Creek. These were ranching families. These were the people that most of them were cattle ranchers, sheep ranchers, that probably brought the sheep and the cattle for the ranchers and for the miners up in town. Here's Indian Springs. Indian Springs is on our feet. You come up on the Courtney Road and you'll turn on Indian Springs, come down on Indian Springs. Indian Springs and Spenceville Cemetery was established in 1855. Here we go, 1881. A lot of pioneer buyers' family, very old Nichols family, they owned a great portion of the Beale Air Force Base. And when World War II came in, they lost a great portion of that to the Military Training Center. Also, the Robinsons, Lowell and Neils, Mom and Dad, are buried in there too. Another picture of the Buyers' family. This is the Strutman family. As you're looking behind, you see Pilot Peak right behind the Strutman's Owen Pilot Peak at one time. And I think they've sold off most of their holdings. Church family. This is a Nichols plot. Penn Valley. Probably the oldest family plot in there is the Melvin Brown's family. Melvin passed away a couple years ago. He was a rancher on Spenceville Road. A dairy farmer, rancher. Here's another picture. These are the natural cemeteries. Nothing's changed. They've kept them this way. There's no water in there, so it would be fruitless to try to grow any grass. A lot of people call this the "swing pool. " They're not used to having a family plot with 26 burial plots. Rough and ready. Very popular cemetery for us. It's one of our bigger cemeteries. It's 3. 56 acres. We still do a lot of burials in there and have a lot of open spaces that are available. It's very nice. On Sondylie Hill, they're an off-the-stage coach. How many in here have gone out looking at cemeteries? It's very popular. We've got a lot of them. The only cemetery that I haven't been to is Mule Springs. I know it's close to Dutch Flap, but I've yet to be there. That's the only one that hasn't been there, so I've got to visit that and someday I will. When I first came to work 30-some years ago, rough and ready was just a dry. I didn't know what to do with it. I was trying to think ways to plan a couple of trees and make it look more. When you plan a couple of trees, you get a little shade in there. It was just such a hot area during the summer. I went in there and I got a tractor. You can see these trees right here. They're Deidore cedars. I dug these gigantic holes. If you know anything about rough and ready, it is a rock pit. I dug up so much rock that we had to haul it away in dump truck loads. I didn't get any dirt out. I dug these six by six by eight foot deep holes. It was just all this clustered rock together. It's a real hard place to dig. I brought in really good humus with a lot of amenities in it. I planted these Deidore cedars. They were about four foot tall. Now they're 50 foot tall. I did that about 25 years ago. I'm glad I did that because I planted some redwoods in there. They're doing really well. It's giving it that little bit of green. I like that in the cemeteries. Just add a tree or two and it makes it look so much nicer. Here's rough and ready. At the top of the hill, as you come in, it gradually slopes up. This is at the top where we have a little turnaround area. Very nice cemetery. Very old. 1851-50 right in there. It's a very nice cemetery. Old stones. In fact, we're putting together a project that's going to take a few years. We're going to do some headstone restoration. It's not cleaning the stones, but as you can see, these tall stones right here, they're set on rocks and bricks. The bricks have all deteriorated. The rocks have all fallen apart. We're putting together a program. As for this year, we're going to put together a program and try to straighten up all the headstones in our cemetery. If there's some big ones like that that are getting ready to topple, some people put a rock under there. We're going to try to straighten all those out. That's going to take a few years to do that. This is going back to the hospital cemetery that I jumped to. I'm sorry about that. Oh, here we go. This is the number. He has number 293. If somebody had to put that marker up, he lived to 60. In 1888, that's probably considered a good age to live. If somebody had to put that stone there, he would have got that little wooden marker, and his marker would have been gone. After that cemetery filled up behind the county hospital, the 500 graves, they were going back there so much, probably filled up in a couple of years, they went to phase two. This is on Lewis Road, off of Willow Valley Road. This is the little, it's the county cemetery, we call it Lewis, the Nevada County Cemetery, Lewis Road. This one here is the continuation of that cemetery that's over behind the H. W. Building. There's approximately 300 buried in this cemetery. And it's filled. So it's filled up, so everything was pretty full. There it is after we did some cleanup. There's a nice shot. We put some crosses in there, and I think if there was any Jewish people there, they would forgive me. This is Scotty, and here again we planted these Deodora cedars. I've got this, I'm a fetish over these Deodora cedars. They grow fast, they're drought tolerant, great tree, they always look like a Christmas tree. And we planted, this is the Baidu burial grounds, six acres, and we still maintain it. And we go in, it's not so much a maintenance, but it's, we spray around the perimeter for fire control, we weed eat in there for fire control, so there's no fires getting started. We clean the front, and what we did is we planted these trees. I think this picture is back in 2000, and 2002, 2003. Those trees right now, Scotty's there, six foot, so they're about ten foot trees, they're now 25 feet tall. Is this out near the kampudi? I'm sorry? Is this out near the kampudi? It is, kampudi is just right over the side of the hill. This is on Gachin, Gosheen? Is it Gosheen? I believe it's an Indian term, Indian name, and it's down over in a housing development. There were big five acre, six acre lots in there, maybe some bigger ones, and we got this from the property owner, he did this, because they knew that the Indian burial grounds was in there. And so we fenced it off with a six foot cyclone fence, and we did some restoration, we take out all the dead trees, and stuff like that, so we keep it somewhat maintained. Did you see where the graves are there? You know what, they didn't leave any markers. They pretty much kept, you know, there's some spots in there. I did have some of the local Indians take me in there and show me some locations where there was a few. I did get some lists of names, I think there's 50 names that I have from them that had been buried back to mid 1900s, 1940, that they had gone in there and buried them. This is, we're working up at North San Juan Protestant. It's another big cemetery, it's about 2. 2 acres on the side of the hill. And so we're constantly working up there. It's a beautiful cemetery, it's got some big black oaks. Here's a case where the headstone, we'll be spending a lot of time in here, this is a case of somebody coming in and pushing the headstone. It was probably a three tier, and what happened is they pushed it off and it broke into several pieces. We'll go in there with our hoist, and we'll put all that back together. We've probably already done this. And it's approximately 95%, I think we have about 30 full body internments left there. Nice trees, a headache when they come down. We've had several come down, it's almost an all summer job to remove them. French Corral, right in the town of French Corral, it's kind of off the back, but it's right there. Most of the people that are buried in French Corral are the local families. We have some reserves in there, we have some plots that are still available. And this is my pride and joy here, this is the one that I, our clean up is, I'm always in there because we get more visitation in this cemetery. This cemetery gets more visitation than any other cemetery in the county. And the reason for that is because it was very popular with a lot of the school kids from the Bay Area, Sacramento, they would come up and do the tour. That's going to be missed when the park closed down. The cemetery will still remain open because it belongs to us. And it belongs to the taxpayers in Nevada County, and we do a well maintained cemetery. As you're driving in between the church and the school, you come to the main gate. This section over here is the old section, the established section, and we have a new section. So the cemetery is split kind of right down the middle. So we still have remaining plots up there, it's very popular, people like being buried up there, very tranquil, very nice historical cemetery, but well maintained. Here's the new section here. We let the families with a contractor's license, they get a contractor that comes in and they build these, these what we call copes, coped areas. The copings now, most of them are done in concrete. But if you go across, across on the old section, especially Bloomfield, you'll find a lot of them wood. We have a lot of wood ones, we have granite, those are very popular back in the late 1800s, early 1900s. If you're out in the cemeteries in Nevada County, you'll see a lot of that granite walls that are built up around the side of the coped areas, around the family plots. We have a lot of people who are going to the house, we have a lot of people who are going to the house, we have a lot of people who are going to the house, you are going there and you are coming down the road, and you are going to the town of Omega, well when you get to the very top, there is Alpha that heads back down towards Washington, you stay on the right, go down, go across, and before you get to the town of Omega, which has skated across it because it is probably on, you come back up before the split, and the road is right there on the left hand side, and it is just a little trail that goes back in there, and it is just a car, we were just in there doing our maintenance, and they got it all cleaned up, pretty small cemetery. We have started a restoration program over at the Tennessee Oddfields Lodge #16 in Pine Grove, Pine Grove is the large cemetery on your right, as you are coming up Red Dog Road, and as you come in you have got Masonic Lodge, Knights of the Piffy, as woodcutters of the world, as you turn, and it is the first left as you go down, it is 0. 67 acres, and it is right on the corner of Red Dog, and Park Avenue, it is that corner parcel, this is a project, this is a picture before we start the project, I do not have one that shows what we have done, if you are out and about and you drive through, take a look, we have taken out, we have grabbed all the plots, we are getting ready to do the aisleways, we have got that pretty much, took out all the old trees so they will not tear up all the plots, but see most of these right here are granite, this is probably all these plots right here, this is all solid granite rock that they have shaped into these tokens, it is very popular, this is our new project, this is the Elster Memorial Cemetery, this is right after we received the deed for the property, for the property at Elster Memorial on McQuarney Road, and I believe it was a fall day, and we took out this digger pine that died, and if you only can see it now, I have got some pictures I want to show you of it, here is what it looks like, this is the property before you put a fence around it, there it is again, oh we just put the fence around it, this is right after you can see the fence, we put a six foot cyclone fence, try to keep out the deer, that is almost impossible, they, there are so many deer out there, I saw 15 the other day, and I would like to show if Dennis will, anybody have any questions? Anybody want any questions about cemeteries? I pretty much know all the laws. (audience chattering) I think a lot of people want that, but you know I don't know, you know you are right, I do, we have so many big trees that have gone through, and have actually lived up those plots, and have gone in, and they've done some things, I can tell you some stories, yes they have gone into family plots, we've had to go in there and remove the tree, or the tree falls down, and then we have, what we have is a big mess, and then we try to keep the tree standing, you know if I can keep them standing, but a lot of times they build, you know, well when they build these things, there's, the trees are probably like this, and now the trees are like this, and some of the old grave sites that we have, and you know. (audience chattering) You know, it's hard to find, when I go out, I used to go out when I was younger, I used to go out every Memorial weekend, I would stay all from dusk to dawn, and I'd go to Bloomfield, Pine Grove, I'd just walk around, and if I saw somebody like in Bloomfield, if I saw somebody overt by a family plot, boom, I would be lying over him, and I'd say, you know anything about this family, they would give me all this information, and I used to be writing it down, and I, it's, anyway, I don't know if you can see these, when could you, okay, this is the start of the construction phases, I kind of just took some quick shots, and I did this right here, hey, how about this, the first thing that went in in our district was we made a road, look at that, brand new handicapped parking, that's the first thing, yeah, all this property, and we built this gravel, or it was dirt or time, dirt road going in, it built this, it didn't look right, the fancy handicapped parking, and I, and everybody said, what are you doing out there? We had a lot of that, and these are pictures that, the process, we had a really bad rain this year, and we had to put out the waddles, so anybody knows what waddles are there, road shoe control, we had them a mile long, they were going in every direction, I never had so much rain, this is the entryway, this is nice, because if I had an old picture of the entryway, and this one, we had nice rock pillars going in, this is off of Courtney Road, right next to the existing cemetery, is right to your left, as you drive in, right to your left is the Loney Sanford Ranch Cemetery, and then right next to that is the Higgins Fire District, number two station, so if you go out there and take a look at this, this is what it's turned into, I took a couple shots, I think, yeah, this is this morning, and I went out and we planted the grass, we have all the trees in, these little platform areas there, the paper platform areas, these are going to be for niche columns, above ground cremations, this is before we did the grass, I kind of got to mix it up, this is kind of before we did the grass, we were doing layouts of power and water lines, and a lot of the stuff we did, just trying to save money, the project, I don't know our bottom line cost of the project, I know we're into probably $250,000, but the end result is going to be well worth, this is going to be a jewel for the county and the taxpayers, this is looking, this is beautiful, this is looking into that area that we took out that tree that I showed you that picture, and these areas in here were the niche columns, it's got a little walkway coming up, and these little paper areas are for niche columns, that's going to be a garden in there, there's another picture of it, this is our path walkways, we got walkways that go out in through the cemetery, and out into, this is the area coming from the old cemetery, so we have walkways that are coming from the old cemetery, the Loney Sanford National Cemetery, into our lawn, grass, Elster Memorial Cemetery, so there's access coming in, there's another view, that's a beautiful view right there, that's pretty much what it looks like, it is just going to be, I'm thinking we're going to have about 1200 in-ground plots, another 500 cremation, we'll start out with probably 60 niche columns, scattering garden is, you can put as many as you want in a scattering garden, an ossuary we have in an ossuary, this is going to be the new veterans marker, this is where we're going to line this with the flags, this circle that comes around, we're going to line this with all the military flags, we're going to have the American flag with the California underneath it, and then the POW underneath that, and we're on the process of putting that together right now, another picture looking back into the cemetery grounds, this is the divining, as you can see on the right is the new section, and on the left the transition from the old section to the new section, with the pavers, the aisleways coming from the old section into the new section, it's really, and we use some of the moss rocks that are out there, I'm, I put together a little project that we're getting, we're right now currently putting together a, we're going to have a water feature, and the water feature is going to go right in the middle of this, it's going to be a tranquil waterfall in the middle of the spot there, between the two pavers going each way, and that'll be a real nice addition to the cemetery. I just put this in, this is our, he's done both of our rock pillars, he did such a nice job that I had him pose for me, and this is kind of, you know, after we got the road in, this was kind of the first thing, first phase of the, we put the rock pillars in, and the rest of it, BP landscape did the landscape, he did a fantastic job, and our plans are to have our grand opening, we have a tentative date for October 1st, at the cemetery, so after October 1st it'll be open for interments, we're excited, it seems like every time we turn around, we have another cemetery, the list is getting long, and I'm hoping that's good. Question? We have a list that we put together of, we have a computer, we put all of it in the computer, we do three different things, we computer download, then we do, we have paper files, then we put paper, but those are, you know, you can't trust those, we put them in fire saves, but you never know what's going to happen, but we do disk every night, and then I take a disk home, and we put a disk in our, we have a fire, big fire save that we put the stuff in there, so we, three places, we have a pretty good list of all people that are buried in the cemetery, it's probably not, nothing's 100%, but, How can the public access it? If you were to call me, I could probably put together something, and a lot of that information, the Nevada County House, SIRLS has a ton of it, they have a ton of it, yeah, we got a lot of our information, because Ed Tyson, yeah, Ed Tyson was on my board, and Ed Tyson, I think is still at SIRLS, I'm sure he's, you know, probably somewhere up there, anyway, he, He's overseeing this. He had me doing all kinds of things, he had me dragging boxes that were mill-doo-y, says he's overseeing this. I do have a map of all the cemeteries, I know where they're all at, I even know where all the Chinese cemeteries are, you can get them after that, you give me your name, and I'll send you one. You wouldn't have it on the internet? No, not yet, we have it, we have a website, www. nevada. cemetary. org, in the Nevada Cemetery District, and we have a lot of information, we just don't have all the list of all the names, and all the, I think we have a list of all the cemeteries, but I don't have all the names and I'm not doing that, so that's a lot. Do you have any better information than I've received from St. Patrick's, on the old St. Patrick's? No, I don't have any of that permission. And the reason for that is because, It belongs to Diocese. It belongs to Diocese, and if I talk to those people at least two or three times a week, you talk to Franklin. Yes. Okay. I have a question. I'd like to clarify about Pine Grove. I have quite a few pioneer family members that are buried there, and it's my understanding that the Cemetery District has kept maintenance of part of the cemetery, but then part of it has been given to Hooper and Weaver. Okay. When I first started, Because some of the graves are in that. Okay, repeat the question. Okay. I was trying to clarify, since some of the graves Pine Grove are actually collapsing in themselves with the top broken. And we have those in the yacht also. Yes. I'm trying to find out who has what responsibilities for maintenance at Pine Grove. Okay. Pine Grove, when I first started, and I didn't know anything about it, we went in and maintained it. Then we found out that we didn't own it. And that county council came to me and said, you're not supposed to be doing this work on, or came to a working and said, you can't use taxpayers funded money to maintain something that somebody else owns. So we stopped maintaining Pine Grove. Then Pine Grove was owned by several different, as you drive in, and I can tell you this, I had a map. Pine Grove is owned by several different fraternal orders. Masonic Lodge, down over the side of the hill towards Nevada City, Knights of the Piphias, to your left as the old Odd Fellow Cemetery, down over the hill. Nevada City actually had a part of that cemetery. And then in the back, as you're going in the back and swing around and go out on Park Avenue, that section back in the back, a lot of that was used for the indigents. And that was an indigent burial ground. And I got a lot of this stuff. Roman Rzezinski, we used to go back, he'd come over and we'd talk and he'd point people out and say, you know, this used to be the, and I said, okay, and that's, you know, okay, read this letter. He would give me a lot of, I just got a lot of information from everybody. But what happened was, we found out that we didn't own the cemetery. We didn't hold the deed. So you can't use taxpayers' dollars to maintain. Hooper Weaver bought Ed Farana out. And when he bought Ed, that gave him the control of whatever's not owned by the fraternal orders. Hooper Weaver has the control over those, that area in there. Well, that's a problem because I paid to have some graves for my family taking care of that were having problems. If you talk to them, they say they only are responsible for burials, current burials. And there are graves that are collapsing. Yeah, well, there's, I'm in there all the time. So I know that, yeah, there is a lot of them in there. And it's something that needs to be brought up. I don't know if it'll ever happen. Not. But it is a cemetery that, it's in disgrace, and it should be, it should be taken care of. It's a big cemetery. It'll be a lot of work. I think if everybody got together and we all sat down and joint action, you might be able to do something in there. Now, what we're going to do is, we're going to maintain, we're going to try to bring that old odds fellow section up to a point where it looks so good that people are going to start complaining about the rest of it. And that's how it gets started. And then pretty soon, people are going to want to know, well, how come it is all maintained like that? So, but that's our plan. And I'm sorry that remember doesn't be responsible for just the burials. They actually own it. But back when the cemetery started, it was started by homes. Grove. Grove. Grove, sorry. Grove. Grove. And he sold those plots to the individual families for needing, they had actual deeds for those plots. So they actually sold them. So that gave the responsibility to the families to maintain their own plot. That's how I'm, you know, that's about as much as I know. (inaudible) To answer your question. (inaudible) (inaudible) Endowment fund. Everybody know what endowment fund is? In the cemetery business in California, it's mandated by the state of California, Health and Safety Code, that all cemeteries have an endowment fund. Cemeteries prior to '63 didn't have to have an endowment fund. They never stepped on that. They didn't have to have them. But anything after that, they had to have an endowment fund. But if you're in the cemetery business, after all the people that I've talked to, all the cemetery people, endowment fund is a necessary, and it's based on a square foot of the surface space of the plot. And so if it's $4, our plots are 4 by 10. If it's $4, it's 40 foot, it would be $160. So that's the minimum that can be charged for endowment care. So that money goes into a fund. Right now, our fund goes up to the county, goes into a fund, and we can only use the interest off that fund. We cannot use the principle, but only the interest off that fund for the maintenance of the cemetery. So we think it's good that everybody has endowment. So that's why we put everybody that comes into our districts, we have an endowment fund. And that all goes into this, and our fund has grown and grown and grown. And I know some people, Sutter Cemetery District, that has 11 million dollars in their endowment fund. - Ooh, a million dollars. - We don't. We don't. We don't. If I had 11 million dollars, no. No, we don't have. We didn't start on endowment fund. We were started basically for the restoration and the preservation of historical cemeteries in Nevada County. That's basically why we were started up. But now we're more into the business. We have some plots. We have some land. So no, we don't have that. If we had started back in 1909, getting endowment, we would have some. We didn't have nice domestic. Anyway, we don't have that. But it is growing, and we watch it every month, and we use the interest for the maintenance of our cemeteries. And anybody else have any questions? - Are you saying that you want donations and contributions, or is the endowment paid for by the people who want to be insured there? - Donations are fine. Who's going to turn down donations? I mean, do you want to donate to my retirement fund? No. It's, we have a great board. And Dennis has taken over for David Ray. David Ray has been my chairperson for, you know, since '97, '98, and has done a great job. We all love him dearly. He had the board meeting. He said, "I just want to be a board member. " And of course, Dennis stepped up, and I think Dennis is going to be a great asset. And he already is. He went after that pioneer cemetery like a mountain lion. And he, I'm real proud of what he's done. I was kind of dejected because I didn't know if I wanted this cemetery. I went up and took a look at it with him. We walked through several times, and I said, "This needs to be, it's Nevada City. This needs to be, this needs to be taken care of. " So in the next couple of years, I want you to go up there and take a look at it and see what we've done. Because it's going to really change. We're going to put new fences. We're going to trim the trees. We're going to put paths in there. We're going to straighten up all the headstones. It's going to be so nice. It's going to be like a little park. We are, for a donation, we're specifically looking for, it is a parcel of land near Lake of the Pines in the southeast of Parkland County. Ulster Memorial is in the southwest of Parkland County. So if you have some land or know somebody who would like to make a tax, tax, pre-contribution of some land or some cash, you definitely might have an LOP type. Thank you very much. (applause)