Attempts being made to identify those buried at the Al Tahoe Historic Pioneer Cemetery

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. - There's been movement at the Al Tahoe Historic Pioneer Cemetery, and thankfully it isn't from some of the occupants, most who have had that as their final resting spot since the late 1800s and early 1900s.

When Thomas Rowland founded the town of Rowlands in 1866, at the end of what is now Lakeview and Bellevue Avenues in South Lake Tahoe, he dedicated some of his land for a town cemetery. By 1870 Rowland's station was thriving with several homes, blacksmith and cobbler's shops, a mercantile, milk and smoke houses, and a commercial fishing camp. The main attraction was Rowland's Custom House and Saloon, a two-and-a-half story building on the end of a pier over the lake. It became "the place to party at the lake."

That cemetery still stands today and is located at 790 Alameda Avenue, South Lake Tahoe.

The first person buried in the cemetery was in 1861, before it was formally a place of rest for the early residents of the South Shore. For a few decades the earliest pioneers of the area were buried there including Rowland and his wife Sophronia, their daughters Flora Dickey and Fannie, and her husband Herman Barton and several members of the Young family. Flora is the last person to have been buried at the Alameda site in 1959.

Since that time the Kiwanis Club of Tahoe Sierra has been holding annual clean ups of the area and Lake Tahoe Historical Society (LTHS) has been keeping an eye on things since a fence was added after the area became a dumping ground. The cemetery and other historic spots in the neighborhood are a stop on the Al Tahoe Walking Tour. Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) came into the picture when they formed in 2019 and spearheaded the survey project and subsequent research on pioneer residents. The land where the cemetery is located is owned by the City of South Lake Tahoe.

The Al Tahoe Historical Pioneer Cemetery Support Committee is made up of DAR, the City of South Lake Tahoe, the California Tahoe Conservancy and LTHS. Through a grant from the El Dorado Community Foundation and assistance from the City, DAR brought in a company that recently did a Ground Penetration Radar (GPR) survey of the cemetery. Since the Al Tahoe neighborhood was created decades later, as well as the paved streets, there was no map of where the bodies rested that had no headstones...under the street, on the adjacent Conservancy property, or just in the cemetery?

The amount of grave sites was unknown until the survey confirmed a total of 121 grave sites at the historic cemetery (and none were found under the road). The identity of these 121 individuals has been a challenge to determine as head stones and grave markers have been removed or deteriorated over time, leaving historians to rely on historic obituary records and news articles for clues and information. To date, the efforts put forth by the Historic Society and DAR members have been able to identify 35 of the individuals buried in the cemetery.

The City of South Lake Tahoe Public Works staff in partnership with the rest of the committee are seeking information from families that have evidence of past family members who are laid to rest within the Al Tahoe Historic Pioneer Cemetery.

If you have information of family genealogy, have possession of grave markers, records or connection to the Historic Pioneer Cemetery, please reach out to Dawn or Shelby at info@altahoecemetery.org.