Rest in Peace….

The words found on tomestones are often as diverse as those they stand above. In the Logan City cemetery there are many different anecdotes, scriptures and phrases gracing many headstones, some are even engraved with lines of poetry, one even boasts a fudge recipe.

The Logan City Cemetery is considered a park and is open to the public from dusk until dawn. It also provides a path for students from campus to the Student Living Center. Although to some the cemetery may seem like a dark and scary place, many students walk through it on their way to and from school.

Julianne Pack, a master’s student in second language teaching, lives in Aggie Village and cuts through the cemetery to get to school because it is the shortest route. She usually walks home around 7 p.m. just when it is starting to get dark.

“I should be scared but it doesn’t bother me at all because it’s so familiar,” Pack said. “I could go around I guess, but I like it here.”

Dallas Holmes a professor of extension and continuing education at Utah State enjoys getting some exercise by walking in the cemetery.

“I walk here almost every single day when school is in session,” he said.

Holmes walks in the cemetery twice a day. He comes in the mornings with his wife and walks two miles. In the afternoon he walks about another three by himself while listening to the oldies station on his headphones.

“Seth keeps a heck of a nice place here,” Holmes said.

Seth Sparks has been the Logan City cemetery sexton for 30 years. A native of Cache valley, he grew up in Clarkston and graduated from Utah State with a business degree in marketing.

He said the responsibilities of a sexton include arranging burials and taking care of the cemetery grounds.

Along with his position there is one other full time position and another part time. Other maintenance positions are hired as needed.

“Over the past 30 years things haven’t changed too much,” Sparks said. “We do things exactly the same as we always have. We keep digging holes and filling them in.”

He said the Logan City Cemetery is the resting place for approximately 18,500 people.

“On average there are probably 230 burials a year,” Sparks said.

He estimates that there have been at least 6,000 burials since he has been in charge of things at the cemetery.

According to Sparks, in order to reserve an individual burial plot at the cemetery a Logan resident will need to pay $360. The cost for non-Logan residents is $650. However, this does not include the opening and closing fee – a fee associated with the actual grave digging. For that Logan residents pay $325, non-Logan residents pay $510.

“It’s estimated that there is about 25 to 30 years of selling space left,” Sparks said. “After that the cemetery will be full but it will still need to be maintained.”

David Simmons is the general manager of the Nelson Funeral Home, which has locations in Logan and Smithfield. He is also the president of the Utah Funeral Directors Association. He said the average cost of a funeral in Cache Valley is anywhere from $5500 to $7500.

“Typically the cost is split about 50/50 between the services and the casket,” Simmons said.

As a funeral director he performs around 125-150 funerals a year. Of those funerals he estimates about 25 percent are buried in the Logan cemetery.

Jared Bott, a junior in political science, has been in and around cemeteries most of his life. His family owns Nu-Art Memorial Co. in Salt Lake City, they create headstones for many of the graves in the Logan cemetery. He recently finished carving a death date on one of the headstones in the Logan cemetery and often works by himself.

“I’ve been stuck working as the sun goes down and I have never seen anything out of the ordinary,” Bott said.

Sparks hasn’t witnessed any thing unusual or weird during his time as the cemetery sexton either.

“At least not with the dead people,” Sparks said.

There is a Logan City cemetery tour that visitors can pick up at the cemetery office during business hours. It is sheet of paper that contains 18 interesting sights in the Logan cemetery, a short description of each one and a map to locate them.

Some of the graves on the tour include famous Logan residents, May Swenson, a local poet of national acclaim and Ezra Taft Benson, grandfather of the 13th president of the LDS church, Ezra Taft Benson.

There is a special place on the cemetery tour that is referred to as “babyland.”

It is where 1/2 lots are sold to accommodate infant burial. Sparks said that sometimes people will have to bury a baby in babyland when they are not planning on being buried in the Logan cemetery.

“A lot of students have buried babies here over the years,” Sparks said.

Another special place in the cemetery is referred to as the “pioneer plot.” A memorial marks the place where 42 people “known only to God” are buried as the result of moving the first cemetery in Logan (known as the old Logan graveyard) to the current cemetery back in the 1870’s.

According to documents in the Logan City library archives the Old Logan graveyard was established in 1860 one year after Logan was settled in 1859. The old Logan graveyard was located on the north side of 5th North, what is now the bottom of Old Main Hill.

This graveyard was used for six or seven years and about 60-70 people were buried there. The city council decided to move the location of the graveyard in 1865 because of “considerable water seepage from the hill above.” In 1879 Christian Larsen the current cemetery sexton met with the city council and it was decided the bodies buried in the old Logan graveyard should be exhumed and moved to the new cemetery.

Only twelve bodies were identified and moved to family plots in what is now the current Logan city cemetery, 42 more now reside in the pioneer plot. The rest of the early settlers buried in the old Logan graveyard, if any, were never recovered.

-nnaylor@cc.usu.edu