Panguitch City Cemetery

When we were visiting Grandma Cooper, we took a ride out to the cemetery nearly every day.  Granted there wasn't much to do in Panguitch, but I don't think boredom was the reason we went there.  One reason was my grandpa, Than Cooper was the Sexton of the cemetery.  He became the caretaker after retiring from sheep herding.  I don't remember him doing anything else but taking care of the cemetery so I assume he started that job in the late 50's or early 60's.  I was told that when he took over care of the cemetery, it was nothing more than a field of sagebrush and weeds.  He turned it into a very nice place.  I found a picture of the cemetery before he became the caretaker.  It can be seen Here. 

My mom went to Panguitch almost every year for Memorial Day when I was growing up.  Memorial Day, or "Decoration Day" as it was called, was quite an event.  We took flowers for the graves of every family member buried in the cemetery and spent quite a bit of time placing them on the graves.  Before there were many plastic flowers produced for Memorial Day, people cut fresh flowers to put on the graves.  Generally there weren't too many flowers blooming that early in the year in Panguitch, so we would take some from our home.  Mason jars from Grandma's house were collected to put the flowers in.  Grandma also saved special flower baskets for the occasion.  Grandma packed a lunch in a pail to take with us.  She planned to stay most of the day visiting with family and friends she would see there.  We always made a trip back out to the cemetery later in the day to see how it looked with all the flowers.

Being that it was a long day, my brother and I had lots of time to explore the cemetery.  I loved to walk around and look at the headstones.  There are so many I remember.  We were always sad to see when vandals had damaged them.  Sometimes when we were taking a ride around the cemetery during one of our daily trips, we kids would have Mom stop at our favorite monuments so that we could walk over and look at them.  Last summer my husband and I went to Panguitch for Pioneer Day.  We went to the cemetery and I got photos of many of the headstones I remember from my youth.  Maybe you remember them too? 



And who could forget John D. Lee?

John D. Lee pictures courtesy of Tom Todd Findagrave.com