Mountain View Cemetery (Oakland, California)
The Mountain View Cemetery is a 226-acre (91 ha) rural cemetery in Oakland, Alameda County, California. It was established in 1863 by a group of East Bay pioneers under the California Rural Cemetery Act of 1859. The association they formed still operates the cemetery today. Mountain View was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, the landscape architect who also designed New York City's Central Park and much of UC Berkeley and Stanford University.
 Millionaire's Row, Mountain View Cemetery, Oakland, California. | |
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| Details | |
|---|---|
| Established | 1863 |
| Location | |
| Country | United States |
| Coordinates | 37°50′07″N 122°14′13″W |
| Type | Public |
| Size | 226 acres (91 ha) |
| No. of graves | > 24,000 |
| Website | Mountain View Cemetery web site |
| Find a Grave | Mountain View Cemetery |
Many of California's important historical figures, drawn by Olmsted's reputation, are buried here, and there are many grandiose crypts in tribute to the wealthy, especially along the ridge section with a view across the Bay to the San Francisco skyline, known as "Millionaires' Row".[1] Because of this, and its beautiful setting, the cemetery is a tourist draw, and tours led by docents began in 1970.[2]
Design
Panoramic view from the rear of the cemetery, looking out across the San Francisco Bay
Olmsted's intent was to create a space that would express a harmony between humankind and the natural setting. In the view of 19th century English and American romantics, park-like cemeteries, such as Mountain View, represented the peace of nature, to which humanity's soul returns. Olmsted, drawing upon the concepts of American Transcendentalism, integrated Parisian grand monuments and broad avenues.
Adjoining Mountain View Cemetery is Saint Mary Cemetery and the Chapel of the Chimes mausoleum and columbarium.
Notable burials
View of the cemetery from Charles Crocker's tomb
There are many notable people interred in Mountain View; many are local figures in California history, but others have achieved wider fame.[3]
Politicians and government officials
- Washington Bartlett, Mayor of San Francisco (1882–1884), Governor of California (1887)
- Coles Bashford, Governor of Wisconsin and Arizona Territory politician
- Leonard W. Buck (1834-1895), rancher, California State Senator.
- Warren B. English, US Representative (D) California
- John B. Felton, Mayor of Oakland (1869–70)
- William M. Gwin, one of California's first U.S. Senators
- Henry H. Haight (1825–1878), Governor of California (1867–71)
- William Knowland, U.S. Senator, Publisher,Oakland Tribune
- Adolphus Frederic St. Sure, Federal Judge
- Samuel Merritt, early Mayor of Oakland[1][2]
- Romualdo Pacheco, Governor of California 1875
- George Pardee, Governor of California 1903–1907[2]
- George C. Perkins, Governor of California 1880–1883; U.S. Senator, 1893–1915.
Industrialists and business people
The statue above Domingo Ghirardelli's mausoleum.
The Crocker mausoleum on Millionaire's Row
- Warren A. Bechtel, industrialist, founder of the Bechtel company
- Anthony Chabot, father of hydraulic mining and benefactor of Chabot Space & Science Center[2]
- Charles Crocker, railroad magnate, banker[2]
- William E. Dargie, Owner, Oakland Tribune
- Frederick Delger, German shoemaker and multimillionaire
- Freda Ehrmann, mother of the California ripe olive industry
- J. A. Folger, founder of Folgers Coffee[1]
- Peter Folger, American coffee heir, socialite
- Domingo Ghirardelli, namesake of the Ghirardelli Chocolate Company[1]
- A.K.P. Harmon, lumber and shipping magnate, secretary Oakland Tribune Publishing Company
- Austin H. Hills, founder, with his brother, R. W. Hills, of Hills Bros. Coffee in San Francisco in 1878
- Herbert Gray Hills, son of the co-founder of Hills Bros. Coffee, and active in its expansion into a national brand
- Herbert G. Hills, Jr., grandson of the founder of Hills Bros. Coffee, sold in 1976 and later purchased by Nestlé's, S.A.
- Henry J. Kaiser, father of modern American shipbuilding
- Ingemar Henry Lundquist, mechanical engineer, and inventor of over the wire balloon angioplasty
- C.O.G. Miller, head of Pacific Gas Lighting Corporation
- Isaac Requa, made fortune in the Comstock Lode and railroads[2]
- Joe Shoong, Chinese immigrant and founder of the National Dollar Stores chain[2]
- Francis Marion Smith, the "Borax King"[2]
- Charles Miner Goodall, Co-Founder of the Pacific Coast Steamship Company
- Lewis Bradbury, a gold-mining millionaire who owned the Tajo Mine in Mexico, and later became a real estate developer
Military
- Brigadier General Henry Brevard Davidson of the Confederate States Army
- John Coffee Hays, Texas Ranger and first sheriff of San Francisco
- Eli L. Huggins, Indian Wars soldier and Medal of Honor recipient
- Henry T. Johns, American Civil War soldier and Medal of Honor recipient
- Ralph Wilson Kirkham, Union Army general
- Oscar Fitzalan Long, Indian Wars soldier and Medal of Honor recipient
- Rossell O'Brien, American Civil War veteran who started the custom of standing and removing one's hat during the national anthem
- Jeremiah C. Sullivan, Union Army general and staff member of Ulysses S. Grant
- Adam Weissel, United States Navy sailor and Medal of Honor recipient
Thomas Hill's grave marker
The Miller Crypt pyramid.
Arts and culture
- Leandro Campanari, Italian-American violinist, conductor, composer and music teacher.
- Malonga Casquelord, Congolese dancer, drummer, choreographer and founder of Fua Dia Congo.
- Herbert A. Collins, landscape and portrait artist
- Ina Coolbrith, California's first poet laureate
- Andre Hicks (aka Mac Dre), Bay Area rapper, record label owner, and producer[1][4]
- Thomas Hill, artist
- William Keith, California landscape artist
- Janice Louise Doane, author and Professor Emeritus of Saint Mary's College of California.[5][6]
- Bernard Maybeck, architect[2]
- Julia Morgan, architect[1][2]
- Frank Norris, author[2]
- Floyd Salas, author
- Isabel Seal Stovel, organizers of the City of San Francisco Music Week
- Bella French Swisher (1837–1893), writer
- Douglas Tilden, sculptor
- Victor Jules "Trader Vic" Bergeron, Tiki Mixologist, Restaurateur[7]
Local history
- Edson Adams, laid out the city of Oakland
- Rev. Benjamin Akerly, pioneer Episcopalian cleric of the Bay Area, performed the dedication of Mountain View Cemetery and officiated hundreds of its burials
- Moses Chase, believed to be the first American to settle in the East Bay area[2]
- David D. Colton, vice president of the Southern Pacific Railroad, namesake of the city of Colton, California
- Alexander Dunsmuir, builder of the Dunsmuir House
- Henry Durant, first president of the University of California, Berkeley[2]
- Joseph Stickney Emery, founder of Emeryville, California
- Anna Head, founder of the Head-Royce School
- Nannie S. Brown Kramer, organizer, president and membership director of the Oakland Women's City Club[8]
- Henderson Lewellyn, Quaker abolitionist who first introduced varietal fruit trees to Oregon and California. The orchard he established in Alameda County, Fruit Vale, is the namesake of the present Fruitvale neighborhood in Oakland.
- Jane K. Sather, donor of Sather Gate and Sather Tower to the University of California, Berkeley
- Francis K. Shattuck, prominent in the politics and early development of Alameda County, Oakland and Berkeley
- William T. Shorey, African-American whaling captain and Oakland civic leader[2]
- John Swett, founder of the California Public School System
- Charles Lee Tilden, namesake of Tilden Regional Park
Other
David Hewes burial vault
- Volney V. Ashford, exiled revolutionary
- Cloe Annette Buckel, one of the first female doctors in California
- Glenn Burke, first openly gay player in Major League Baseball[1]
- Henry D. Cogswell, dentist and temperance movement crusader[2]
- Marcus Foster, first Black Superintendent of the Oakland Unified School District in Oakland, California, first victim of the Symbionese Liberation Army
- David Hewes, who provided the "Golden Spike"
- Bobby Hutton, first treasurer of the Black Panther Party
- Fred Korematsu, challenged Executive Order 9066 in the landmark Supreme Court case Korematsu v. United States
- Joseph LeConte, co-founder of the Sierra Club
- Ernie Lombardi, Hall of Fame Major League Baseball player
- John Marsh, first American doctor in California, also helped spur transcontinental wagon travel[2]
- John Norton Pomeroy, law professor at Hastings College of the Law
- Elizabeth Short, unsolved Hollywood murder victim known as the Black Dahlia[1]
- Josiah Stanford, older brother of Leland Stanford and ran Stanford Winery
- There is one British Commonwealth war grave, of Pilot Officer James Raymond Lippi, an American born member of the Royal Canadian Air Force, who died in 1942.[9] Lippi was born in Santa Cruz, California and went to Canada to enlist for World War II
- Lee Ya-Ching, China's First Lady of Flight, first female pilot graduated from Geneve-Cointrin (Switzerland) and from Boeing School of Aeronautics.
In popular culture
Mountain View Cemetery is featured prominently in the 2018 film Blindspotting. Daveed Diggs's character is shown going there for morning runs, and an important scene happens in the cemetery where the character imagines Black victims of police brutality standing over the graves.[10]
In The Big Wake-Up, a 2009 crime novel by Mark Coggins, the main character in the book, a detective named August Riordan, discovers that Argentine first lady Eva Perón is not at rest in the Duarte family tomb in La Recoleta Cemetery, Buenos Aires, but is actually buried in Mountain View Cemetery.[11]
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References
- Andrew Chamings (March 2, 2020). "From the Black Dahlia to Mac Dre: The bodies of Mountain View". San Francisco Chronicle.
- Abby Cohn (January 5, 2001). "They're 6 Feet Under, But Pioneers Draw Crowds to Oakland". San Francisco Chronicle.
- "Famous People at Mountain View Cemetery - Comprehensive List". Mountain View Cemetery. Archived from the original on December 10, 2005.
- "Andre Louis "Mac Dre" Hicks (1970-2004) - Find A..." www.findagrave.com. Retrieved 2018-03-31.
- https://www.amazon.com/Janice-L.-Doane/e/B001H6KYUM%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share
- https://www.stmarys-ca.edu/faculty-award%E2%80%93winner-janice-doane
- https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/19073652/victor-jules-bergeron
- Binheim, Max; Elvin, Charles A. (1928). Women of the West; a series of biographical sketches of living eminent women in the eleven western states of the United States of America. p. 59. Retrieved 8 August 2017.
- CWGC Casualty Record.
- "'Blindspotting' is a Spot-On Portrait of an Oakland in Flux". KQED. 2018-07-17. Retrieved 2018-09-05.
- "Evita Plays Oakland?". Southern Cone Travel. 2010-04-20. Retrieved 2020-03-17.
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