Brigham City Cemetery- Fact or Folklore? Mass burial sites

There has long been reports and rumors of a mass burial grave of railroad workers who died of cholera in the Brigham City Cemetery and histories of "pauper's graves" or "Potters Field." Some of this has been challenged by research and ground penetrating radar. An editor’s note, challenging the cholera burial, was taken from https://brighamcityhistory.org/.../community-development.../  It states, “This seems rather unlikely, as most railroad workers were buried fairly near where they died, and usually not in town cemeteries. Additionally, a search of newspapers from the time revealed cholera outbreaks at other times and places among railroad workers, but not in Utah in 1868 or 1869. There are two possible locations of that burial, according to sextons. One is the triangle just inside and to the left of the corner entrance at 300 East and 300 South, or an area in the southeast corner of the cemetery known as Potter’s Field. This particular Potter’s Field is so named because during the Depression, the city allowed burials for those who could not afford to buy a burial plot. The city will never sell burial rights in either location. Lori Hunsaker, “Memorial Day draws visitors to BC Cemetery, rich in heritage,” Box Elder News Journal, (Brigham City: May 22, 1996).

In conjunction with this conundrum, The Historic Brigham City Association did some investigating on the location of these spots. The first spot (the pictured triangular shape spot near the opening) was originally owned by Lorenzo Snow (see map photo). In December of 2018, Dr. Mary Cannon from USU used ground penetrating radar to evaluate this spot and her report concluded, “The geophysical survey did not find conclusive evidence for a mass burial, as hypothesized by local legend. However, there is one potential area within the survey block that may contain unmarked burials and should be confirmed via ground truthing or avoided for future burials.”

The other possible location (that was previously the southeast corner of the cemetery- it has since spread further south) is just south of the area where children are now buried on the eastern edge of the cemetery. Bott oral history notes that this was also a place for those who couldn’t afford burial plots in the early 1900s through about WWII. A lone headstone (see photo) shows an individual buried here during the Great Depression and is much earlier than the surrounding headstones. Bott oral history stated that this individual was the only individual identified from period.

Triangular shaped area on the left.

Triangular shaped area looking north and west towards the cemetery entrance

The large, red headstone noting the individual buried there died in 1937. Surrounded by more recent burials of children

Map from book, "Polygamy in Lorenzo Snow's Brigham City: An Architectural Tour," published by the College of Architecture & Planning, University of Utah, 2005