Do you have a favorite cemetery and, if so, why is it City Cemetery, which currently lies hidden under Lincoln Park Golf Course and the Legion of Honor Museum in San Francisco? You know the one, with 20,000 people lying unmarked and invisible? Come with us on a journey back to the Gold Rush, where not one, but two cemeteries were closed and moved to the newest municipal burial ground, CITY CEMETERY, where they would eventually be abandoned and turned over to golfers and museum-goers. If you liked hearing about the PIT OF BONES at Fort Mason and Yerba Buena Cemetery, you'll love finding out what a CHARNEL HEAP is in this episode.

Show Notes

San Francisco's Forgotten Cemeteries: A Buried History: https://www.bethwinegarner.com/san-franciscos-forgotten-cemeteries

Here Lies A Story : Lost Cemeteries of San Francisco

https://hereliesastory.com/lost-cemeteries-of-san-francisco/

SF Genealogy, City Cemetery:
https://mail.sfgenealogy.org/doku.php?id=san_francisco_history:cemeteries:city

Alma de Bretteville Spreckels:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alma_de_Bretteville_Spreckels

Tunnel boring machine "Big Alma"

Richard Barnes, "Still Rooms and Excavations:"
https://www.richardbarnes.net/still-rooms/883irtu53jjpubdflaiy0p67uosyrz

Nikki the Archaeologist:

https://www.instagram.com/nikki.the.archaeologist/

City Cemetery landmarking:
https://www.sfheritage.org/community/lincoln-park-officially-designated-as-a-city-landmark/

Steven Welch, a fifth-generation funeral director at San Francisco's Duggan's Funeral Service, joins Beth and Courtney to share what mortician life is like, both today and historically. He also dishes about the embalming job on Pope Francis, how HBO's "Six Feet Under" feels torn from the pages of his own family's life, and how cremation services leave room for funerary malfeasance.

Links:

Jessica Mitford, "The American Way of Death" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_American_Way_of_Death

Valencia Street funeral home map, FoundSF: https://www.shapingsf.org/images/fall2021/Corridor to Colma 11x17_final smaller.pdf

Pope Francis' embalmed hands:

What do you know about the bubonic plague? Probably that it killed a lot of people, it broke out in the middle ages, and rats were somehow involved. . . but did you know we ACTUALLY HAD A PLAGUE OUTBREAK IN SAN FRANCISCO?

That's right, in 1900 the plague came to the city, and it wreaked havoc for 8 years. Join us for a journey through crowded tenements, racist blockades, wooden pallets full of fleas, quack medicine, corporate conspiracies, and finally, FINALLY some actual science.

The Great Mortality by John Kelly

Plague and Fire: Battling the Black Death and the 1900 Burning of Honolulu's Chinatown by James C. Mohr

The Barbary Plague: The Black Death in Victorian San Francisco by Marilyn Chase

The Plague Comes to San Francisco @ Here Lies a Story

Plague at the Golden Gate American Experience

City of Plagues by Susan Craddock