Buena Vista Park famous headstone

As you walk the winding, tree-lined paths of Buena Vista Park, look closely at the edges of the rain gutters and the foundations of the drainage ditches. You are standing among the remnants of San Francisco's forgotten cemeteries. In the early twentieth century, the city ordered the removal of nearly all burial grounds within its limits, forcing a mass relocation of remains to the nearby town of Colma. When the graves were cleared, families could pay to move their loved ones and their markers to new burial sites. Thousands of headstones belonging to those without living relatives were left behind and claimed by the city’s Department of Public Works. During the Great Depression, the Works Progress Administration repurposed these unclaimed marble monuments as building materials. Today, you can still spot faded letters, partial dates, and even the word died etched into the stone slabs that now serve as simple masonry for the park's pathways.