I just found this interesting story about an old mariner’s cemetery located in the Presidio dating back from the Barbary Coast days, filled with possibly up to 800 bodies. Too bad they just want to put the area on display instead of doing an exhumation and dig; I’ll bet the bodies have so much to tell us about out Barbary Coast past. They think it’s 130 years old, and the army simply called it “landfill 8″. Snip:

“The cemetery itself, located just beyond the closed Public Health Service Hospital near 15th Avenue and Lake Street, is invisible. The graves, which once had neat wooden headstones enclosed by a fence, were buried under 16 feet of debris from excavations of a missile site in the 1950s.

A parking lot was built at the same time over one corner of the graveyard and a tennis court over another. And then the cemetery was forgotten — literally covered up. Now, archaeologists from the Presidio Trust, which operates the former Army post, are looking into the lost cemetery with an eye to explaining it to the public.

It is an eerie spot, even now. The cemetery is located behind the derelict and abandoned hulk of the old hospital, which looks a bit like a shipwreck. Its windows are broken and the walls are covered with graffiti. There is not a single sign explaining what lies under the weeds in the little valley of the dead.”

Link to Merchant seamen forgotten in death Mariners’ cemetery buried in debris, used as parking lot. Image of the Presidio’s Pet Cemetery.