JERRY PERSON -- A Look Back

When I was growing up, we would look forward to trick or treating on

Halloween night. Of course, the older kids in the neighborhood would try

to scare us little kids with stories of ghosts, ghouls and how they saw

something moving about in the nearby graveyard.

Now that we’re grown, we all know it was just part of the Halloween

myth. We also now know that a local cemetery actually contains a wealth

of history within its walls, and this week, we’ll look at our local

cemetery’s wonderful history.

When Huntington Beach changed its name from Pacific City in 1904, the

town’s only cemetery was atop a small hill near Goldenwest Street and

Yorktown Avenue. From 1904 to 1907, Reservoir Hill contained 12 of our

early residents.

Before he died, Huntington Beach historian Bud Higgins told me a story

about one of those residents. A man died and was buried there with a

small tin box. Everyone in town wondered what the man could have had in

that box.

In time, the small town of Huntington Beach needed a high place for

its water tank and the 12 were moved to a cemetery in nearby Garden

Grove. I guess even the dead are not safe from development.

In 1908, the Huntington Beach Co. established a new cemetery out of

town at what is now Beach Boulevard and Talbert Avenue. The Huntington

Beach Cemetery was comprised of 4.32 acres of county property. In 1953,

the cemetery was sold to a Compton-based group that owned Woodlawn

Memorial Park in that city.

With the help of J. Sherman Denny of the Huntington Beach Co., the

group purchased an additional 25 acres in October 1953. The new park

would be known as Rose Lawn Memorial Park, which would later be known as

Roselawn Gardens of Memory. David H. Payne was its president with Frank

Walton Cleland serving as the cemetery manager.

Payne and his wife, Margaret, lived near the cemetery, at 8345 Talbert

Ave., and Cleland and his wife, Joan, lived at 8341 Talbert Ave.

Opposition to the expansion developed from a few nearby residents,

businesses and a builder from Costa Mesa who thought that such an

expansion would turn people away from his 125-home subdivision across the

street.

The Orange County Planning Commission approved the plan in December

1953. In 1967, the cemetery was sold to the Archdiocese of Orange and

renamed the Good Shepherd Cemetery. Land was added to the original

acreage.

I spoke to Chris Bak, a 21-year councilor at Good Shepherd, and he

told me they have burial records going back to May 4, 1908. He also told

of how they are looking forward to developing the remaining land.

So the next time you pass our cemetery, just think of how much history

lies within its walls and that it isn’t a place for the dead, but a place

for the living to remember. * JERRY PERSON is a local historian and

longtime Huntington Beach resident. If you have ideas for future columns,

write him at P.O. Box 7182, Huntington Beach, CA 92615.