Land of the Dead : How the West Changed Death in America

Living in America, we are often confronted by our past. But those in San Francisco literally come face-to-face with it. At the turn of the twentieth century, a 1901 decree ordered the exhumation and relocation of over 150,000 graves in the city – the only major metropolitan city in America to order a complete eviction of its dead. American Exhumation uncovers this fascinating and forgotten section of American history.

The epic San Francisco cemetery battle is waged over a century, replete with fiery polemics, political intrigue, nasty legal wrangling, and contested elections. Public cemeteries are dispatched quickly but – as time will reveal – hardly well. Private sanctuaries take far longer to expunge, and many are overlooked in what has been called “perhaps the greatest mass removal of the dead in human history.” What made this boom town filled with gold rushers, prostitutes, and immigrant workers decide to move their buried dead? And, how did other early American cities reckon with the now-precious land they once dedicated to their dead.

In this well-researched and well-told history, Terry Hamburg explores how an “instant city” heritage bred that momentous decision. “The story of the city’s cemeteries is the history of the city itself,” wrote the San Francisco Daily Evening Post over a century ago.American Exhumation provides a fresh overlay on traditional narratives, revealing a burgeoning city’s trends and conflicts from a unique perspective. Even further, Hamburg proves thathow we relate to the “living dead” is as significant as how they were originally buried and (presumably) relocated – in San Francisco and elsewhere.