The Hailey Cemetery on Fox Acres Road may give up some of its mysteries this summer.
About an acre of lawn in the southwest corner of the cemetery has long been rumored to contain unmarked burials of residents and workers from the 1880s mining boom.
How many graves are there, and who lies resting in them, is still unknown, but many longtime residents of Hailey believe the graves belong to Chinese immigrants who came to the Wood River Valley in the 19th century to work in the mines.
This summer a ground-penetrating sonar crew from Boise will survey the entire cemetery, focusing special attention on the grassy area.
Laura Hall, a local history buff and co-founder of the Blaine County Historical Museum's Heritage Court, thinks it is high time the cemetery establish a memorial to commemorate the unknown Chinese of Hailey Cemetery.
"Idaho was hard on the Chinese," Hall said. "There have been lost souls here for more than 100 years who were never returned to their ancestors."
A map at the cemetery office describes the area in question as the "Chinese Cemetery," but there are no city records confirming the nationality of those buried there.
Wood and paper markers that once would have marked Chinese graves in the cemetery were destroyed in a brush fire in the 1930s. Another fire that later swept portions of the town destroyed burial records associated with the site.
There are no marked graves of Chinese from the mining era anywhere else in the cemetery.
Ray Grosvenor, chairman of the cemetery board, said the survey is necessary because the board wants to develop the area, perhaps building a columbarium for public storage of cremated remains.
He said the cemetery board would like to establish a Chinese memorial, but first has to make sure they are not building on gravesites.
"We have been trying to find out what is in that corner of the cemetery for several years now," Grosvenor said. "You can feel bumps in the ground out there where old pine boxes have collapsed. This will be experimental for us, but if the ground has been disturbed in any way, it should show up in the study."
He added that there could also be a "boot hill" out there—a graveyard for anonymous indigents and people who ran afoul of the law during the 19th century.
Teddy Daley, director of the Blaine County Historical Museum, said there were about 300 Chinese living in Hailey during the 1880s, working in mines, keeping shops and growing crops at the mouth of Croy Canyon in what is now the China Gardens subdivision.
"The custom back then for those Chinese who could afford it was to eventually dig up someone's remains and send them back to China for reburial," Daley said.
It is hoped that sonar readings gathered by a Boise State University crew this summer will determine the precise location of gravesites in the area. The readings may also provide information on the physical makeup of underground materials, but probably not the ethnicity of those interred.
Blaine County Coroner Russ Mikel said he heard from a member of the Friedman family years ago that the area was in fact set aside long ago for burying the Chinese.
"I understand that they did not keep records and that they also kept a low profile, because Chinese in Idaho were discriminated against," he said.
Steve Tompkins, the Hailey Cemetery clerk, spends a lot of time on the grounds and is familiar with the cemetery's history. He will be working closely with the sonar crew as it searches for clues.
"There have been many flaws in record-keeping over the last 100 years," he said. "We hope to remove some of the ambiguities with this study. If we see a row of buttons and a belt buckle, we will know someone is down there."
But Tompkins said there are many more mysteries to be solved in the Hailey Cemetery, like why Carey Rossville, age 29, was buried in the center of the "Chinese Cemetery" in 1899.
"Why would she be buried right there smack in the middle of all those Chinamen?" he asked.
"There are a lot of mysteries out here," Tompkins said. "There is another grave in another part of the cemetery with a headstone that says 'Long-haired George,' and nothing else."
Tony Evans: tevans@mtexpress.com
A lone tombstone, belonging to Carey Rossville, who died in 1889, marks the center of an area of the Hailey cemetery where officials expect to find numerous unmarked graves of Chinese workers and shopkeepers from the mining era.
