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THE ASTORIAN • SATURDAY, MARCH 6, 2021
Cemetery: Records are spotty, dead have moved around
Continued from Page A1
Goodenberger and Luc-
ien Swerdloff, who leads
the college’s historic resto-
ration program, aren’t sure
what to expect in terms of
community response to a
possible name change. But
both men think of the debate
that erupted in 2019 around
dated language on a wooden
sign behind Fort George
Brewery that commemo-
rates Fort Astoria.
Continued from Page A1
Records are spotty
With the cemetery, lan-
guage is only a small part of
the dilemma.
As many as 700 burials
may have occurred at the
Astoria Pioneer Cemetery
between 1865 and 1897. But
records are spotty and the
dead have moved around —
multiple times.
Some were dug up and
moved when the cemetery
fi rst opened in 1865. They
came from a cemetery far-
ther down the hill that had
become more valuable as
land to develop rather than
as a fi nal resting place. Then,
when the city’s Ocean View
Cemetery opened in War-
renton in 1897, families
were encouraged to relo-
cate remains and headstones
there. Some bodies went to
Greenwood Cemetery off of
state Highway 202.
Stories have grown
around these frequent dis-
turbances at the hilltop
cemetery: a beautiful dead
woman found perfectly pre-
served until her windowed
casket is opened and she
disintegrates;
teenagers
break into the Shively fam-
ily’s ivy-covered crypt in
the far corner of the ceme-
tery, push aside a casket lid
and a skeleton rises up only
to — poof! — explode into a
cloud of grave dust. Before a
small grill on the crypt door
was covered, it was actually
possible to see bones in the
crypt, former park employee
Dick Magathan said.
Some members of Asto-
ria’s early families once
rested at the hilltop cem-
etery — the Van Dus-
ens, Capt. George Flavel
— but they were moved to
Ocean View decades ago.
One city founder is still up
there, though, likely buried
somewhere under Niagara
Avenue.
Then there are the Chi-
nese bodies that might be
buried in the cemetery or,
because of prejudices at the
time, just outside its bound-
aries under what are now
city streets. One persistent
story involves a mass grave
or the unmarked graves of
hundreds of Chinese work-
ers at the cemetery.
If the story is true, Good-
Photos by Hailey Hoff man/The Astorian
The Astoria Pioneer Cemetery does not have a sign above the main path entrance.
Old gravestones are scattered at the cemetery.
enberger wrote city lead-
ers, “bone for bone, there
are more Chinese peo-
ple in the cemetery than
Euro-Americans.”
Though there are only
a few grave markers left
— many of them diffi cult
to read or damaged — it is
likely several hundred bod-
ies are still buried in the
cemetery.
Burials prohibited
It’s been 124 years since
you could die in Astoria and
be buried there. The city pro-
hibited burials in city lim-
its beginning in 1897. After
it closed, the hilltop ceme-
tery was fi rst neglected, then
forgotten.
Magathan, who built
a split rail fence around
the cemetery in the 1980s,
remembers a story of how
neighborhood children acci-
dentally kicked a ball into
what they thought was a long
abandoned lot only to dis-
cover gravestones.
Efforts to clear out black-
berry bushes and revitalize
the cemetery as a park began
in the 1950s and ‘60s. In the
late ‘60s, the cemetery was
renamed Astoria Pioneer
Cemetery, complete with a
carved wooden entrance sign
and a granite monument.
A plea even went out from
the chairman of the county
historical advisory commit-
tee, asking people to return
grave markers that had dis-
appeared over the years.
“There are rumors that
some have found new use
as paving stones in walks
and patios about the city,”
according to a 1968 article in
the The Daily Astorian. “Dr.
(Edward) Harvey said no
questions will be asked if the
missing stones simply come
back.”
A positive aspect of the
hilltop cemetery’s name is
that “pioneer” makes it clear
the door is shut to future
burials.
“It states very clearly: We
aren’t using that cemetery
anymore, don’t even ask,”
Goodenberger noted.
He wonders if changing
the name back to Hillside
would reignite any inquiries.
But Eric Anderson, the
owner of the Hughes-Ran-
som Mortuary & Crema-
tory in Astoria, said he has
never had to fi eld inqui-
ries about an Astoria burial.
Most people go to Ocean
View, he said, or Greenwood
Cemetery.
Anyway, the number of
traditional casket burials is
low with cremation rates
hovering at around 80% to
85%.
The city records around
70 to 80 burials at Ocean
View each year — a mix of
casket burials and crema-
tions, but most are crema-
tions, according to city staff.
It is a personal decision,
said Anderson, though cost is
often a major driver. A ceme-
tery plot for a casket can be
expensive and then there are
hefty fees to open and close
a grave, plus funeral home
costs.
To Anderson, however,
the dip in traditional casket
burials also refl ects the evo-
lution of Astoria. More and
more, people are moving
here from outside the area,
he said. They don’t have
family plots at Ocean View.
They don’t have ties to the
old names.
Despite all the upheav-
als among the graves and
the uncertainty that per-
sists about who is buried
there, the hilltop cemetery
is an important historical
site, Swerdloff and Gooden-
berger said.
There were once several
cemeteries around Astoria,
but the hilltop cemetery is
the only one that hasn’t been
paved over or built over. It is
still recognizable as a place
of burial. The scattered few
headstones that remain can
only tell visitors a fractured
story of the past, but there
are still hints to be gleaned.
“I would nominate it as
representative of the lit-
eral movement of Astoria,”
Goodenberger said, adding,
“As the houses came up the
hill, the dead had to keep
moving.”
Vaccines: As of Friday, 8,967 doses have been administered in county
Continued from Page A1
Chris Laman, the direc-
tor of pharmacy and cancer
center services at Colum-
bia Memorial Hospital in
Astoria, who is leading the
vaccine task force, said the
roughly 1,100 people who
were rescheduled over the
past couple of weeks due to
weather-related disruptions
in vaccine delivery have been
vaccinated.
Laman said the disrup-
tions and rescheduling cre-
ated a lot of confusion and
frustration during an already
diffi cult process.
“We’re trying to make it
as simple as possible with
online registration,” he said.
“But in the age group that
we’re in, with those 80 and
older folks, it’s challenging to
get through the online regis-
tration process. And so to get
rescheduled, not just once,
but multiple times through
this electronic communica-
tion, was incredibly frustrat-
ing for that group and right-
fully so. I was frustrated as
the leader of it that we were
having to do this.”
G oing forward, he said,
“we have a plan for vaccine
supplies so that we’re not
going to be promising doses
to people before we have
them at the county health
department. So we should
not have to reschedule doses
for not getting shipments or
Dunes: Friends of the
Dunes at Cannon Beach
applauded state’s decision
‘THIS RESPONSE WOULD
NOT BE WHAT IT IS WITHOUT
THE VOLUNTEERS.’
Margo Lalich | Clatsop County’s interim public health director
deliveries.
“But I think at each week,
new sort of things develop
and come up that the task
force has to work through.”
Laman said the task
force, which includes the the
county, Columbia Memorial,
Providence Seaside Hospital
and Coastal Family Health
Center, meets daily to talk
through and identify chal-
lenges and potential weak-
nesses in the system .
The task force is in com-
munication with pharma-
cies at Safeway in Asto-
ria and Seaside and Costco
and Walmart in Warrenton,
which are also administering
vaccines .
In preparation for more
vaccines, the task force is
starting to plan with hospitals
for when they will receive
vaccines for their own vacci-
nation events.
“There’s point people at
each of those entities now
who are responsible for plan-
ning for how that’s going to
work in each of their sys-
tems,” Laman said. “So it’s
a really strong collaboration
that’s going on in the county
right now.”
Margo Lalich, the coun-
ty’s interim public health
director, said people may be
scheduling appointments for
a vaccine at a pharmacy and a
county vaccination event and
going to whichever one they
get into fi rst. However, she
said it is important to let the
other entity know they will
not make their appointment
so that a dose is not prepared .
Lalich said the task force
is also developing a strat-
egy to reach out to people
who can’t get to vaccination
events , whether because they
are homebound or from hard-
to-reach populations.
The Sunset Empire Trans-
portation District is provid-
ing free transportation for
people who have vaccination
appointments in the c ounty.
People must schedule with
the transit district at least 24
hours in advance.
The task force is continu-
ing to invite priority groups
to vaccination events. Peo-
ple receiving second doses,
teachers and seniors 70 and
older were invited to the vac-
cination events scheduled in
the coming week.
Unlike many other states,
Gov. Kate Brown placed
teachers high on the priority
list. The governor announced
Friday that she would issue
an executive order to return
students to classrooms state-
wide. The target for kinder-
garten-through-fi fth grade is
the week of March 29, while
sixth-through-12th grade is
April 19.
As of Friday, 8,967 doses
have been administered in
the county, including 5,788
fi rst doses and 3,179 sec-
ond doses. The county’s
goal to reach herd immunity
against the virus is vaccinat-
ing 27,533 people.
Lalich said the county’s
vaccination events are heav-
ily dependent on volunteers,
as it takes anywhere from 30
to 70 people to run an event .
“This response would
not be what it is without the
volunteers,” she said. “The
administrative volunteers,
the clinical volunteers, those
who are retired, whether
they’re medical, nonmedi-
cal coming out. We have vol-
unteers who will sometimes
volunteer for two different
roles in a day, who will vol-
unteer for every single clinic.
“And it’s really this sense
of selfl essness — and with-
out all of us we wouldn’t be
able to have such a robust
response to the community.
The volunteers are absolutely
integral and the gratitude is
overpouring.”
management plan. They
hoped to roll back poli-
cies that will restrict cer-
tain types of dune grad-
ing and dune maintenance
measures .
In its decision , the
a ppeals board rejected a
number of arguments from
the homeowners associa-
tions, including claims that
the inability to grade dunes
for views and limits on how
much sand can be removed
through permitted grad-
ing activities will make it
impossible to maintain cer-
tain public beach accesses
or preserve designated res-
idential areas.
The homeowners had
also asserted the city’s
updated policies will lead
to unnatural dune growth,
while the continued plant-
ing of non native European
dune grass will help form
steep dunes and could con-
tribute to unsafe conditions
on the beaches.
Tim Ramey, of the
Chapman Point Homeown-
ers Association, said he
could not provide a com-
ment. The board had not
yet had time to discuss the
state’s decision, he said.
Board members for the
Breakers Point association
could not be reached for
comment.
Friends of the Dunes at
Cannon Beach applauded
the state’s decision, calling
it a victory for the coastal
environment.
In a statement, Dianna
Turner,
the
group’s
co-chair, said the deci-
sion will “reverberate up
and down the coast giving
strength to other commu-
nities who want to protect
their dunes and beaches.”
With the shifting ocean
and storm conditions pre-
dicted to intensify with cli-
mate change, she said, “We
must continue to push for
policies to maintain coastal
dunes both for their natural
beauty and as a front line of
defense from environmen-
tal threats.”
Cannon Beach began
the process of updating its
dune management plan in
2016, prompted by requests
from residents to remove
large amounts of sand and
concerns from others about
the ecological and visual
impacts of these opera-
tions. The policies out-
lined in the new plan were
to refl ect updated scientifi c
information.
Numerous public meet-
ings and hearings followed.
The P lanning C ommission
sent recommendations to
the C ity C ouncil in 2018,
which approved a fi nal plan
in 2020.
While state guidance
allows cities to adopt fore-
dune grading management
plans and to grade dunes
or move sand to maintain
views or protect structures,
cities are not required to
allow these types of actions.
Cannon Beach had pre-
viously allowed dune grad-
ing for several reasons: to
protect building and struc-
tures from sand inundation,
to maintain beach access
and to preserve residential
ocean views.
This time, however, city
leaders opted to limit dune
grading overall and elimi-
nate any grading for views.
Those who previously
had been allowed to grade
dunes were not grandfa-
thered in.
Now, grading is allowed
to clear sand away if the
sand is affecting the func-
tion of structures, public
facilities, utilities or other
infrastructure. This type of
grading requires a develop-
ment permit from the city.
The new plan also
allows for preservation
grading, which requires
a conditional use permit,
and grading for emergency
access issues.
Homeless: ‘Housing
is our No. 1 issue’
Continued from Page A1
D uring a task force
meeting on Thursday,
Matthews announced that
Cheryl Paul, of Astoria,
and Shannon Turner, of
Texas, will begin in April .
Paul has worked at the
Astoria Warming Center
for the past several years .
She also volunteers at the
Beacon Clubhouse in Asto-
ria, which does homeless
and mental health outreach.
Turner has worked in
social services for over
four years, and most
recently served at a coro-
navirus recovery shelter .
Paul and Turner will
coordinate
with
law
enforcement and social
service agencies. Mat-
thews hopes that in addi-
tion to connecting people
to services, the work will
result in fewer people vis-
iting hospital emergency
rooms.
Clatsop
Community
Action will reach out to
local government leaders
to be part of an advisory
committee to help over-
see the homeless liaisons’
mission .
Matthews reminded the
task force that the root of
homelessness is the hous-
ing crisis.
“I mean, we’ll do the
best we can, but please
remember, the housing
inventory is extremely
low — kind of nonexistent
right now,” she said.
“Housing is our No. 1
issue.”
Police Chief Geoff
Spalding, who chairs the
task force and was part of
the hiring process for the
homeless liaisons, called
the two positions a sig-
nifi cant accomplishment .
He said the advisory com-
mittee is still a work in
progress.
“In addition to reaching
out to cities and counties,
as we grow this program
and we add new fi nancial
partners, too, we will defi -
nitely be looking to add
individuals to the advisory
committee outside of the
government entities,” Spal-
ding said. “So I look for-
ward to having more part-
ners in this on many levels
to make sure that we have
as much input as possible.
“And I think this pro-
gram will probably look
very different two years
from now than it will today,
and we will learn from this.
And also, we will track
our progress and see how
effective the program is in
our community, which is
what I think a lot of people
will be looking for.”
Assistant County Man-
ager Monica Steele, who
also serves on the task
force and was involved in
the hiring process, thanked
Matthews for securing the
additional funding to hire
two people.
“I think we all knew
from the beginning that
there’s more work than one
person can handle,” Steele
said. “And so from a fund-
ing perspective, Viviana
really went out and tried to
fi nd additional funding so
that when we had two good
candidates come before us,
that we were able to to hire
both of them.”
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