Historic Cloverdale Cemetery hit again by vandals

Motion-triggered wildlife cameras will soon be installed in a historic Cloverdale cemetery, but not to document the presence of roaming critters or restless spirits haunting the burial grounds.

Vandalism last month at the Cloverdale cemetery - the second reported incident in a year - is prompting city officials to take some extra security measures to deter more toppling of gravestones and monuments, and to help catch the perpetrators.

In the latest incident, six grave markers were badly broken, including a couple belonging to infants who died in the late 1800s.

“It’s disgusting that people would go into a cemetery and push over headstones,” said City Manager Paul Cayler, who authorized the Police Department to purchase the camera surveillance equipment to supplement their extra patrols.

“A lot of people are stunned because of the lack of respect,” said Al Delsid, a retired Cloverdale fire captain who volunteers as a caretaker at the final resting place for many of the town’s first residents.

Cemetery vandalism is nothing new and occurs nationwide, sometimes on a large scale with dozens, or even a hundred or more, grave markers damaged at a time.

But the city-owned Cloverdale Riverside-Mt. Olive Cemetery, as it is also known, is revered as the repository of pioneer Cloverdale families and the town’s founding fathers, and the subject of painstaking restoration projects in recent years, including a community effort to repair a 93-foot-long retaining wall that collapsed.

Some damage has been done through the years by ground squirrels and gophers digging tunnels that undermine grave monuments, especially when coupled with heavy rain.

But the latest destruction is clearly a result of human misbehavior. Stones were thrown at the monuments, defacing and shattering some. Beer bottles were found in the area, along with other trash.

Police have not identified any suspects.

Most of the people buried in the graveyard were born in the 1800s, but about a half-dozen have birthdates going back to the 1790s, according to a list of decedents compiled for USGenWeb Archives.

“There’s quite a few with early Cloverdale history,” said Delsid.

Louis Hilt, 34, was the first person buried in the cemetery in 1860 after he drowned in the Russian River, according to Susan Bennett, a cemetery docent.

Other prominent citizens interred at the site include James Kleiser, who laid out the town, and Isaac Shaw, who built the first bank and other mercantile buildings, Bennett said.

She said there’s even English nobility, represented by Lady Catherine Oliphant, who apparently died on a visit to Cloverdale in 1881, at the age of 72.

In all, up to 1,900 people may be buried in the cemetery, which is located off First Street and bordered by the Russian River to the east and Highway 101 and the train tracks to the west.

The grave markers that were ?targeted are at the top of the hill, amid sprawling oaks and olive ?trees.

The latest grave desecration follows gang tagging of some of the graves a year ago and the theft of some copper tubing.

Volunteers cleaned that up and were able to repair most of the recent damage. The volunteer cemetery caretakers, including Delsid and Don Green, a retired truck driver and Army veteran, reassembled the shattered headstones using a special restorative epoxy.

There are different theories about the culprits.

Cloverdale Police Chief Stephen Cramer noted that there are several homeless encampments nearby and there’s been a larger population lately, “but I’m not suggesting they are responsible.”

He said some of the longtime homeless people have a good rapport with police.

“A lot of the times it’s kids,” he said of the typical miscreants linked to cemetery desecration.

But Bennett said kids are getting a bad rap.

“That’s not what they’re into,” she said. “They are into being spooked and spooky stories.”

In fact, she said they like to visit the grave of Delos Moody Blood, in a different section, because of the creepy-sounding name of the man who died in 1937.

Vandalism can be easy to get away with in older, less visited portions of cemeteries. And, in general, nationwide it has often been perpetrated by bored or partying teenagers. Toppling or defacing a gravestone or monument further defies a cultural taboo.

“It’s probably a variation of when people are going by and hitting mailboxes with baseball bats. It’s a little more of an impact when you’re dealing with people that passed,” Cramer said.

Many of the dead with 19th century headstones in the cemetery have families that still live in Cloverdale, Cramer noted.

“It seems like reactionary behavior without understanding the consequences, not just financially but emotionally to the people whose relatives are being vandalized,” he said.

You can reach Staff Writer Clark Mason at 521-5214 or clark.mason@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter@clarkmas