Check Out These Cemeteries in Strange Places!

Here is a list of even more cemeteries in parking lots and other strange places from readers of Wesley Treat's Roadside Resort:

• Monroe, Michigan - behind a strip mall, between S. Monroe St. to the East and Harrison to the West, and Merkle to the South and W. 8th St. to the North.
• Summerville, South Carolina - on US-17, in between lanes entering a Walmart Plaza, next to Hardees.
• Fairfax/Vienna, Virginia - at the corner of Lee Hwy. and Nutley St. near a Safeway and a Starbucks.
• Memphis, Tennessee - next to the Piggly Wiggly.
• Austin, Texas - in the middle of a highway exchange.

More information about the Melvin-Lewis Cemetery in the parking lot of the Pioneer Hills Shopping Center in Aurora, Colorado - Along with the graves of pioneer families by the names of Melvin and Lewis, there are the cremated remains (cremains) of over 1600 people who donated their bodies to medical research during the years 1888-1910. The locations of many of these burials are unrecorded. Read more about it at the Cherry Creek Valley Historical Society and at Yourhub.com. There's also an article about a church group that did a major clean-up at the cemetery this past summer.

I found more information about the cemetery at Starbucks in Virginia from Interment.net: It's the Thompson Family Cemetery, Lee Hwy (Rte 29) east of Nutley Rd in Fairfax, Virginia at the entrance to the Pan Am Shopping Center. There are two visible headstones, but this site includes a list of additional burials.

To get these cemeteries mapped at Names in Stone, all we need is a descriptive location of the cemetery, headstone locations in relationship to other headstones, and the headstone information. At NIS, you find the cemetery on a Google Map - if you already have the coordinates or location, it's especially easy - you just enter the location and you're on your way!