Special guided tours of Al Tahoe Pioneer Cemetery on May 25

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. - The Al Tahoe Pioneer Cemetery will be open for public tours on Saturday, May 25 at 1 p.m. Walk through the historic cemetery built land in the 1870s town of Rowlands which was at the end of what is today Lakeview Avenue in South Lake Tahoe. Located at 790 Alameda Avenue, this is the only historic cemetery in the Lake Tahoe basin. It is the final resting place for some of Tahoe’s earliest settlers.

Learn about who is buried there, and what the Al Tahoe Pioneer Cemetery Improvement Committee has been up to in preserving this part of Lake Tahoe's history.

The earliest burial on record in the cemetery was in 1861. Richard Peters was buried in February 1868. He and his wife operated a three-story hotel at Peters Station, a bend in the road of what came before Kingsbury Grade. On any given day, 300 wagons could be found pulled up to the hotel where five cooks and another five waitresses hustled to keep the teamsters fed along their journey of taking goods up and down the dusty roads between Virginia City and Placerville. Peter's grave marker and surrounding iron fencing were recently restored.

Although the location of his burial is unknown inside the cemetery, Thomas B. Rowland was buried in the cemetery in 1883. The last known burial was Fannie M. Rowland Barton in April 1959.

The tour will be capped at 40 people and people must register at the museum prior to the walk. The cost is $5 per person. The museum opens on Saturday at 11 a.m., or call 530.541.5458 to reserve your spot.