Columbia Cemetery - Rossland, BC - Signs of History on Waymarking.com

Columbia Cemetery

The Columbia Cemetery was established in 1899 as the City of Rossland's Cemetery. It was not the first cemetery in Rossland, in 1895 the Catholic Calvary Cemetery was established on the Wagon Road to Trail. There were also two other common cemeteries just outside the original townsite of Rossland called Laurel Hill and Sunnyside located in what is today, the north eastern part of the City. The gold mining camp of Rossland expanded quickly after 1894 and by the time of its incorporation in 1897 the population had reached 7,000. The original common cemeteries were seen to perhaps be not large enough and they also were surrounded by, and getting in the way, of development.

In 1898, The City purchased 80 acres of land in Happy Valley for parkland and a new cemetery on 10 of those acres. The dedicated road access, called Park Street, was obtained from the Nelson and Fort Sheppard Railway Company's land grant. The City Engineer, Henry Smith submitted a design for the Cemetery - see the accompanying map below.

After 1899, no burials occurred in either the Laurel Hill or Sunnyside cemeteries and every attempt was made by the City in the early 1900s to transfer the remains they contained to the new, Columbia Cemetery. The layout of the Columbia Cemetery was generally adhered to throughout the years of burials although many of the Blocks were never used - see the map below.

Documentation on the Columbia Cemetery is kept in the Museum Archives and includes the 890 burial permits issued by the City and a map done in 1963 to mark the location of occupied grave sites. Amongst other information, the burial permits tell us that 79 remains were transferred from earlier cemeteries and locations and the remains of 17 Chinese were disinterred on four separate occasions to be returned to China. The Columbia Cemetery was used for over 70 years with the last recorded burial in 1971. The Cemetery was officially closed in July of 1985.
From the sign