Historic cemetery in Maricopa County, Arizona
The City of Mesa Cemetery is a historic cemetery located at 1212 N. Center Street in the city of Mesa, Arizona. It is the final resting place of various notable early citizens of Mesa. Among those who are interred in the cemetery are early pioneers, mayors, businessman, criminals and veterans of the United States Armed Forces.
History.
The first known inhabitants of the area were the Hohokam, a Native-American tribe. The Hohokam were the builders of the original canal system in this area and the area of Maricopa in general. The canals were the largest and most sophisticated in the prehistoric Western Hemisphere. It is unknown what happened to the Hohokam and their destiny. With the disappearance of the Hohokam, the area was then settled by the members of the Apache tribe.
In 1877, Daniel Webster Jones, a Mormon pioneer, left St. George, Utah to lead an expedition in Arizona with the intention of founding a Mormon settlement. Jones' settlement was initially known as Jonesville.
Pioneers Francis Martin Pomeroy, Charles Crismon, George Warren Sirrine and Charles I. Robson arrived from Utah and founded the First Mesa Company. This company dug irrigation canals, but not in Jonesville. Instead the canals were dug on top of a mesa nearby, thus the namesake of the current town. In 1880 the Second Mesa Company settled to the west of the First Mesa Company.
On July 17, 1878, Mesa City was registered as a townsite and in 1883, the first cemetery in Mesa was established. In 1891, the citizens of Mesa decided to purchase land along Center Street north of Brown Road to officially establish acuity cemetery after a smallpox epidemic that claimed the lives of 44 residents. In this land they established what is now the City of Mesa Cemetery. The cemetery is operated by the City of Mesa Parks, Recreation and Community Facilities Department.
The cemetery is divided into the following five interment sections:
There are also "infant sections". The infant grave sites are located within the North View and Heritage Garden sections. The cemetery has a "Memorial Acres", which is an expansion section containing an additional 1,059 grave sites.:
The cemetery has a special section in the "Historical Area" where the unknowns who perished during the Great Depression era are buried. There is a memorial on the grounds dedicated to their memory. The area reflects on a bleak period of American history when even permanent memorials were a luxury. There is also a Commonwealth war interment of 23 British Royal Air Force personnel who perished in the Second World War.
Notable interments.
Among the many notable citizens of the city who are interred in the cemetery are the following:
Also interred are the four founding fathers of Mesa:
National Register of Historic Places.
The following houses of the interred are listed in the National Register of Historic Places or listed as historical by the Mesa Historical Society:
References.
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