{"id":77,"date":"2016-10-01T19:41:07","date_gmt":"2016-10-01T19:41:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/testingsite.friendsoflonefircemetery.org\/?page_id=77"},"modified":"2021-10-20T15:50:28","modified_gmt":"2021-10-20T22:50:28","slug":"cemetery-information","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.friendsoflonefircemetery.org\/?page_id=77","title":{"rendered":"Cemetery Information"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lone Fir Cemetery History<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

James B. Stephens purchased a land claim for $200 held by John McLoughlin at Fort Vancouver. The claim extended from the east bank of the Willamette River to present day Southeast 23rd<\/sup> and from Stark Street to Division Street. Stephens\u2019 father, Emmor Stephens, died in 1846, shortly after they arrived in Oregon, and was buried on the family farm. In 1854, Stephens sold the farm to Colburn Barrell with the promise that he maintain Emmor\u2019s grave.\"gilbert-anderson-graveside-900x600\"<\/p>\n

A businessman with a number of ventures, Barrell was an investor in the steamship Gazelle, which exploded in Canemah in April 1854. Twenty-four of the fifty passengers perished, including Barrell\u2019s partner, Crawford Dobbins, and his friend D. P. Fuller. Barrell moved the two men from a downtown cemetery to plots near the Stephens family plot and set aside ten acres for a cemetery, naming it Mount Crawford.<\/p>\n

The ten acres were platted into lots in 1855. A block was donated to the Fire Bureau in 1862 and two were sold to the Masons. IN 1865, thirteen more acres were purchased and then seven more the next year, bringing the cemetery to its present size of thirty acres in 1866.<\/p>\n

Barrell tried to sell the cemetery to the City of Portland but the deal was refused because it was considered too far from town at the time. When the City refused, a group of Portland families and plotholders purchased the land for $4,000 and incorporated it as Lone Fir Cemetery, a name suggested by Colburn Barrell\u2019s wife Aurelia in honor of the solitary fir tree on the land.<\/p>\n

In the early days, there were four small cemeteries in what is now downtown Portland. All of the deceased from these cemeteries were moved to Lone Fir. Later, many from St. Mary\u2019s Catholic cemetery were moved to Lone Fir when it was converted to Central Catholic High School. Their at\"1880_lone_fir_cemetery\"hletic field is referred to as the \u201cBone Yard\u201d to this day. For more than forty years, every burial in Portland occurred at Lone Fir until Riverview Cemetery was established in 1893.<\/p>\n

No money was set aside for perpetual care and the cemetery gradually fell into disrepair. By 1928 it was covered with blackberry mounds and there were 10,000 unknown graves. Prior to the 1870s, there were few stone markers and the wooden ones had rotted or were destroyed in one of several fires in the cemetery.<\/p>\n

Today, Lone Fir Cemetery is one of the oldest cemeteries in Portland and the largest of fourteen historic cemeteries managed by Metro regional government.<\/p>\n

Movies <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

A number of movies include scenes filmed at Lone Fir Cemetery. These include:<\/p>\n