Description

The completed front entrance of the Citizens Cemetery wall construction along Sheldon Street. This was a Work Progress Administration (WPA) project in Prescott, Arizona during the 1930s. The original public cemetery of Prescott, the Citizens Cemetery was used, with only a few exceptions, between 1864 and 1933. A small rocky hill, 6.6 acres in size and covered with bushes, tress, and small prickly-pear cacti just northeast of the proposed downtown in 1864, the site was somewhat protected from the dangers of desperados, drunken saddle bums, and stray cattle. Although over 2,800 people were buried here, no burial plot system that accurately mapped out who was interred and where they were interred was designed until 1904. Stone markers with legible names and dates were rare for the first twenty or so years. Many of the gravesites are marked “unknown,” and some 2,000 graves have no marker at all. In April 1904 Frank Hesse designed a new plat for the cemetery and turned it over to the board of supervisors. The city removed old rotten, tumbled down board fences and cleaned up the entire burial grounds. In September 1933, funeral home director Lester Ruffner recommended that the Yavapai County Board of Supervisors order the cemetery closed for all future burials. Today the 1904 map resides in the archives of Sharlot Hall Museum and is an invaluable resource for researchers and historians.