With the rapid growth and spreading out of our town there is a serious question confronting us and one that may be more easily solved now than at a future time. We refer to the necessity of a more appropriate site being nelected for a public cemetery.
If the town continues to expand, as we all believe it will, only a short time is likely to elapse before the living will be crowding close to the last resting place of our dead. Even at the present time there is only a limited space of unoccupied ground between.
In addition to the undesirability of having the cemetery within the limits of the town is the further fact that the present location is not a good selection from any point of view. It lies in a low place and the gravel and sand of which it is composed almost preclude the possibility of improving and rendering it an attractive spot, such as it should be.
On the bluff west of town there are hundreds of acres of unoccupied land, covered with dwarf pines, shrubbery and grass, large areas of which are as level as a floor, and the soil, a clay loam, where could be laid out a city for the dead that could be improved and ornamented, and where loving hands could plant flowers, vines and ornamental shrubbery around the last resting place of those from whom they had been separated by death. On this elevated plateau, guarded by the majestic mountain peaks that raise their crested heads on every side, the dead would lie undisturbed by the hurry bustle and encroachments incident to the growth of a thriving and vigorous city such as ours gives promise of being in time.
For sanitary reasons and many others, not the least among which is the comparatively small expense that such a change would now entail, we think this matter deserving of immediate attention. Altogether there have been nine interments in the cemetery to date. Ifwe move at once we may be able to put things in such shape that there will be no necessity of increasing this number.
None of us may at present have more than passing interest in such a place, but we know not the day nor the hour that some of our loved ones may pass away and in the event of such an occurrence how solacing would it be to us to know that they had been laid to rest in a spot made beautiful by our hands.
