The Siskiyous

This is the first of a series of posts highlighting a few cemeteries in southwestern Oregon in Jackson and Josephine Counties. In my very brief introduction to the region I wrote: “[The Siskiyous are] a patchwork of agricultural valleys separated by densely forested, rough and tumble mountains and crashing rivers. The climate here is definitely unlike anywhere else in the state, and it's down here that one first smells California. The summer sun and bountiful irrigation have made the agricultural pockets, however small, extraordinarily productive and inviting. Large-scale fruit growers (think Harry & David) have recently been joined by vintners and sustainable farmers and ranchers. Throw in a vibrant regional arts scene and a massive hippie invasion in the 60s and 70s and you have what a lot of people call paradise. Who knows, they may be right.”

The region is also host to some of the most interesting, historic, and entertaining cemeteries in the state, including, arguably, it’s most iconic: Jacksonville. I’d originally considered doing one post to cover the five cemeteries I was featuring, but immediately realized how long a post that would have been and decided to split it into separate entries.

The main reason I decided to do that was, in going to the alphabetical top of my list, Antioch, I realized that it’s story was a post’s worth in itself; hence I’ve reprinted it here in its entirety. The cemetery at Antioch is, in some ways, the least interesting cemetery of the five, but it’s history pushes it onto the list. It doesn’t have the intricate appeal of, say, Jacksonville or Laurel Cemeteries, so I’ve chosen to illustrate this piece with some of the residents of Antioch. They’re ageless. Compare these modern photoceramics with the ones from a hundred years ago.

If you want directions to the cemeteries, you’ll find them at my Flickr site.

The story of Antioch Cemetery is a window unto the psyche of Jackson County. What happened at Antioch and in the surrounding neighborhood (i.e. White City) put its stamp on the region forever.

With 5500 people, White City is one of the largest urban concentrations in Oregon remaining unincorporated. It’s also been a center for poverty, domestic violence, drug abuse, and related social problems, all because of its curious history which has left it a community in limbo for decades.

White City is a new city dating from 1941 when the Army commandeered 43,000 acres of the Medford Valley for a World War II training facility and built Camp White overnight. Besides training upwards of 100,000 soldiers, the town also housed a major hospital and, for a while, a German P.O.W. camp. Pretty much as soon as the war ended, the Army packed up and disappeared, leaving this sprawling, unincorporated town of thrown-together buildings ripe for people who couldn’t be or weren’t too choosy about aesthetics. White City was born.

The Antioch Cemetery grounds were part of the lands commandeered by the Army—which in itself would be justification for telling the White City story—but what happened to the cemetery is pretty amazing. The cemetery was located smack-dab in the middle of the gunnery range and was constantly being bombarded by live shells; which, as you can imagine, is not good for tombstones. Or much else, for that matter. But, to the Army’s credit, they mitigated the damage by laying all the tombstones flat and burying them under six feet of sand, where they remained for the duration of the camp; and when they picked up and skeedadled, they took the sand with them and returned the uprights to their proper locations. What a sweet bunch of guys, no?

The lingering effects of Camp White are not restricted to White City, though. Jackson Country remains a bulwark of patriotism to this day, not only because the residents are grateful that the Army once dispensed largess upon them—a form of modern American cargo cult—but, I suspect, because when the Army left, it left behind a certain number of personnel who thought the valley would make a good place to settle down; a thought that may equally have occurred to tens of thousands of other people passing through the camp; some of whom may have come back here to retire. There are great flocks of ex-military birds in the area.

I was told the story of the Army and the sand by a very pleasant grandmother of four who volunteers as a groundskeeper for the cemetery. She jested that she was “a little concerned that [she] might yet run across an unexploded shell.” She did grant, though, there would be economies of efficiency by being blown up in one’s own graveyard.

Whatever it was that spurred the volunteers to recover this fairly sizable cemetery, it’s been working. It’s not immaculate, by any means, and no one’s watering the place, but the grasses are kept at bay and it’s dotted with oaks and laurels and rhodys, et al. It actively being used and is quite lively for a cemetery of its kind. A fair amount to read and a good excuse to while away some time.

The Siskiyous

Pilot Butte Cemetery
I am stalked by death. Many a morning I wake with a tight cold sweat and a taste of steel in my mouth. I feel the suspension of time that says a crisis is at hand. I am fine. Around me is death. Around me is a cancer eating at my friends and family. Around me people are waiting for the birth of a new child. Around me walk proud young women with newly extended bellies. A friend’s wife is told, “You have to decide on a place for him. A bed. A couch. Soon you will be unable to move him.” The doctor says months. The wife says no, sooner. He has seen the people he will see. I am on the long list. I have seen him for the last time.

Jacksonville Cemetery
Where do you go when you’re no longer here? Is there morning there?

Is there there there?

Chief Schonchin Cemetery
The Siskiyous
The Siskiyous are a jumbled mess of mountains straddling the Oregon-California border. They are what happens to the Cascades as they dribble out in their southern reaches. What distinguishes them from the Cascades is hard to say other than that they spread out into rugged terrain that for a time held one of the fiercest pockets of Indian resistance to the white invasion: the Modoc Indian War. Out here “Indian Fighter” on a tombstone is a not fanciful sobriquet, and the Modocs took down their share of soldiers. Gold strikes were common in these parts and camp town sprang up and disappeared overnight (cf. the introduction to Golden Cemetery on DeadManTalking, when it shows up). Life was as rough and tumble as the mountains.

Jacksonville Cemetery
Today the region is dotted with agricultural valleys separated by precipitous hills. Outside of the valleys it is sparsely populated, but the valleys hold concentrations of people that allow for quasi-independent development, and each city is the Mecca for its own micro-world. In the early days of white settlement Jacksonville was the center of travel and commerce and its cemetery reflects that former glory; it is one of Oregon’s great pioneer cemeteries and worth a trip to the restored town for it alone. Since those days, Medford, Grants Pass, Ashland, and Klamath Falls have run the show. Famous for fruit trees (Harry & David are from Medford), the region has long been a magnet for migrant workers who provide a vibrant addition to the cultural landscape. (Thanks to them, I can attest that you can find an excellent taco in Merrill among the braceros and the teenage girls in their skin-tight Levis.)

In 1941 the Army built a training camp, White City, north of Medford, which left its stamp on the character of the region, even though it was abandoned by the Army after the war. Nonetheless, the region prides itself on its conservative bent and the road signs for Klamath County (I believe) read “We support veterans.” (Let it be known that other parts of Oregon do support veterans, as well.) One legacy of White City is the nearby Eagle Point National Cemetery, which began in 1952 and has bucolic views over the neighboring farm land stretching off to deep-clad mountains.

Antioch Cemetery
Another nearby cemetery, Pankey Cemetery, had a curious involvement with White City. It was located in the middle of the gunnery practice range, not an ideal situation for tombstones; but the Army, bless its heart, sympathetic to the descendants of people buried in Pankey, prior to bombing the bejeezus out of the place, laid all the tombstones flat and covered them with six feet of sand. When they were done, they sucked up all the sand and tilted the stones upright again; although a volunteer caretaker confessed to me that she had a slight concern in the back of her mind that one day she’ll run across a live round left over from those times and meet her demise in that very spot. A short trip, she figured, provided they find the pieces.

Chief Schonchin Cemetery
Thanks to Southern Oregon University in Ashland along with a regional Shakespeare company, the region has also long been a draw for a more lettered and artistic class, which was joined in the 1960s and 70s by a wave of hippie immigrants who brought their own indelible style with them. More recently wine makers and organic, sustainable farmers and ranchers have begun to transform the region’s agriculture and, frankly, cultural life, as well. It’s a heady mix in an area where at least one town (Grants Pass) boasts a banner across its main street proclaiming: “It’s the climate.”

Woodville Cemetery
Scenery’s not bad, either.

Tag Ends
Chief Schonchin Cemetery
Nearly half the photos I brought back, though, are not from the Siskiyous but are distributed between central and south-central Oregon. I’d located four Native-American cemeteries before I departed, none in the Siskiyous. I found the four, but two were adorned with “no trespassing” signs, so there you have it.

I had hoped in this swing through Oregon’s high, dry farm and orchard lands that I would find quintessential Mexican grave sites, but alas, I was disappointed. Still, the best collection of Mexican graves in the state are in the Hilltop Cemetery outside Independence, in the heart of the Willamette Valley. Yet the proliferation of taquerias and taco wagons almost made up for the lack of colorful headstones. Aside from the outstanding tacos from the Merrill taqueria, I had serviceable ones from stands at the Deschutes River Crossing in Warm Springs and at the intersection in Wolf Creek, of all places. I never did find the Wolf Creek Cemetery, but a stop at the fire station directed me to the unmarked cemetery at Golden.

Pilot Butte Cemetery
All in all a successful trip, rich with photos. And aside from getting snowed off Hart Mountain on the Solstice (where the mosquitoes were pestiferous), the weather cooperated just fine.

Milo Gard Cemetery

So, You're Dead Already

Beth Israel

All geography is divided into two part: physical and cultural. The study of cemeteries is a branch of cultural geography. Cultural geography is the social sciences in situ.

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, we can go on to the cemeteries.

You’ll recall in blog one, when I lamented the dear departed Stew Albert, that I promised more on Jewish cemeteries. This is it.

Not unlike geography, all Jews — well, almost all Jews — are divided into two parts, Sephardic and Ashkenazi, which roughly correspond to Mediterranean and Eastern European. The Mediterranean Jews are, more or less, those left over from the diaspora, whereas no one really knows how the Ashkenazi came about. There are competing theories. There are far-flung Jewish outposts in places one would never suspect, such as China and India, and even — to everyone’s utter surprise — South Africa, where a tribe insisted forever, to their neighbor’s ridicule and amusement, that they too, despite being totally like their neighbors in behavior and appearance, were Jewish; only to discover in this time of miracles and DNA analyses, that, not only were they Jewish, but that they were Cohens, an upper, priestly class of Jews. Suffice it to say that American Jews are, for the most part, either Sephardic or Ashkenazi, though that distinction is lost on the average American.

What it means in terms of cemeteries is that Jewish cemeteries are both religious and ethnic enclaves. That you don’t get one without the other. Which is not the case in your average cemetery. Even the most tightly religious Christian or nonaligned cemetery counts among its interred people from all parts of the world and backgrounds. You can be a Hottentot and be buried in the highly Scandinavian Svensen Pioneer Cemetey, for example, and while you may have to be a Catholic to be buried in St. Wenceslaus, you don’t have to be Bohemian. Which all goes towards making Jewish cemeteries unique: they aren’t like other cemeteries.

Beth Israel

They aren’t like other cemeteries in a lot of other ways, as well.

[But, again, before I go any further, I have to issue my standard disclaimer: what follows is local knowledge. How the Jews manage cemeteries in Fort Lauderdale or Scarsdale, I have no idea. I’m talking Oregon here. And not all of Oregon at that.]

For one thing, they’re hard to find. I spent months tracking down Neveh Zedek, even though it’s on street maps. Even when you find their names and addresses, they aren’t the easiest places to locate. Only Beth Israel is visible to the casual passerby, all the rest require driving out of the normal flow of traffic to find them.

There are seven Jewish cemeteries in the Portland metropolitan area, five independent and two as elements of Metro pioneer cemeteries. The five independent cemeteries are all distinguished by having live-in caretaker/guardians. A long history of cemetery desecration has undoubtedly led to that practice. The East Side Jewish Community of Portland (that’s their name) maintains a small enclave within Douglass Pioneer, which is exposed but in a cemetery that is unexpectedly located and not given to vandalism; while, as mentioned in “Stew, I Hardly Knew Ya,” Havurah Shalom hides in the secretive Jones Pioneer, another Metro cemetery.

Shaarie Torah

Ahavai Shalom shares Portland’s Boot Hill with River View, Riverview Abbey, Greenwood Hills, Beth Israel, and the GAR Cemetery, but it’s at the end of SW 1st St., a street you’ll never have cause to drive down, unless you’re heading knowingly for that cemetery. It, Beth Israel, and Neveh Zedek all share common features. Each is very well maintained, the lawns are lush, the plantings pristine, and the monuments are clean and well cared for. Unlike their neighbors, they tend to scrunch their burial plots together, leaving broad open spaces for the future, rather than filling in randomly from all over, which is the normal practice. They both sport endowed chapels. As one would expect from Jewish cemeteries, they have the appearance of attention to detail, respect, pride, and good taste. Many markers are piled with pebbles as a customary reminder of someone’s visit. Epitaphs tend to extol the virtues of family, good works, and modest self-appraisal.

Kesser Israel

The same could be said of Shaarie Torah, another Jewish cemetery on Portland’s east side. It shares the traits of care, live-in protectors, endowed chapels, and clustering of stones. It also shares its grounds with another Jewish cemetery, Kesser Israel, and there is where the uniformity, and perhaps the stereotype, breaks down. Kesser Israel is anything but well-cared for, well-maintained, or properly arranged. They do have a live-in protector, but that house is as ramshackle as the cemetery and looks to depend on pit bulls instead of people to do the job (though to their credit, I saw none). The graves here are more or less strung out in lines, but the open space, instead of being a greensward waiting for its intended use, is a wasteland and junk pile waiting for reclamation. One would be ill-advised to saunter here. Beware the rusty nail. The monuments, too, are often unlike any others in the state, much less in other Jewish cemeteries. A chain-link fence divides Kesser Israel and Shaarie Torah and there is no gate between them — you have to go “out and around” if you want to visit them both — and Shaarie Torah on their side has covered the fence in ivy so that their neighbor isn’t visible. Surely there’s an uncomfortable history hidden here somewhere.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say one cemetery represents the Ashkenazi and one the Sephardim, but at the least they demonstrate that what from the outside might appear to be a monolithic culture, Judaism, is in reality a fractured, multifaceted, and sometimes divisive community, just like yours and mine.

What the Jews do for a living is reflected in their cemeteries, just like in yours and mine, as well. The geography of cemeteries is intimately tied to occupation. It’s not an accident that most Jewish cemeteries are in the Portland area while most Finnish cemeteries are in the woods or along the water. Finnish tombstones are engraved with images of log trucks and fishing boats. Jewish tombstones are… Well, they don’t engrave tombstones with desks or shop counters, at least not that I’ve seen. But occupation is reflected, not only in tombstone design, but in tombstone location. Jewish cemeteries cluster in Portland because Jewish occupations in America are traditionally urban and there has to be a thriving business, financial, or intellectual community before enough Jews arrive to require their own burial ground.

Which leads us to the non-Portland, Jewish cemeteries in Oregon, of which I know three; one of which, Temple Beth Israel’s enclave within Eugene’s Masonic Cemetery, mimics the arrangement with Portland’s Metro for Havurah Shalom and the East Side Jewish Community. The other two, though, are almost defunct. One is part of Jacksonville’s history cemetery (sorry, I have no photos) and the other is Albany's Waverly Jewish Cemetery, which does boast a fairly new grave. They’re interesting because they mark the location of former Jewish communities, which implies that both towns had times of former glory, which they did.

Waverly Jewish

As the southern Willamette Valley fills up and the university continues to grow, perhaps someday Eugene will boast its own, independent Jewish cemetery. But maybe not for a while. I suspect that its Jewish community is closely tied with the traditions of Jewish activism which populate Havurah Shalom rather than the more commercial Jewish occupations, and that the idea of mingling with ones fellow intellectuals in an eco-friendly display cemetery appeals to its sensibilities. Regardless, it takes a good Jewish cemetery or two before one can say they’ve “arrived.” For Eugene, perhaps, the harbor is in view.