Rowley Cemetery - Washburn, MO
N 36° 36.436 W 093° 57.666
15S E 414046 N 4051736
A small, well-kept cemetery on private land that you have permission to visit, in rural Barry County, Missouri
Waymark Code: WMN6HJ
Location: Missouri, United States
Date Posted: 01/04/2015
Views: 3
The topographic maps, which are full of homophonic errors, have this listed as Riley Cemetery, even though there are no Rileys buried here. It was originally the family cemetery for the Rowley family, and has had members of other families (subsequent land owners) buried here. The current land owner has a large marker all ready for himself and his wife. According to FindAGrave, at the time of this waymark posting the latest burial was from 2014. Surprisingly for such an old cemetery, all of the records have at least a death date, and the oldest recorded burial is from 1877; though the land owner told me that there was an 1850 grave that is not recorded. The cemetery sign has the common misspelling of cemetary.
I had wanted to Waymark this cemetery for some time, then I met the land owner, and he described how to get to it. (The FindAGrave description is entirely wrong!) He said it was OK to visit it without having to stop in at his place for permission. The lane to the cemetery is OK, and the challenge is not the one or two gates that you have to go through, either. It is the cattle that want to follow you through the gates to places where they are not supposed to go! I would suggest that you do not try to visit this cemetery by yourself. You'll need a gate opener/closer with you to make it work. And you must close each gate immediately after passing through it.
Start by navigating to: N36°36.276' W93°57.405'
which brings you to a lane that is both a private driveway (not the land owners for the cemetery, by the way) and the access to the cemetery lane. Some topographic maps call this Blake Road. There is a gate at this point that is sometimes opened and sometimes closed. (It was closed when we got there.) This gate only opens one way -- "inward" away from the public road.
Drive west on this lane until you get to a gate that is usually kept closed. It is at:
N36°36.300' W93°57.612'
It is easier to open this gate toward the south (toward you when you are heading toward the cemetery). After closing that gate, follow the dirt/gravel lane up toward the cemetery. If it is cold out and the cattle and horses are wanting hay, you will be surrounded by them, but they won't hurt you.
On the cemetery lane with the beautifully fenced cemetery ahead:
Looking back from the same spot where the previous photo was taken; the cemetery lane gate is just left of the center, and the road gate (which is often open) is out of view to the left.
Note that the house at the right is fenced off from this area and, though it uses the private road (Blake Road) that gets you to the cemetery lane, they are not the land owners for this field.
After visiting the cemetery, we have driven down the cemetery lane to and through the gate mentioned in the previous photo -- after chasing the cattle (a separate herd from those up at the cemetery) away from the gate so we could get through. The gate is 90° to our left and we are looking east down Blake Road toward FR1065. I had to drive to the right (on the grass) to get around this small herd.
