Four

JEROME PIONEER CEMETERY

In 1915, the Jerome Town Council purchased 40 acres of land from the US Department of the Interior to establish a new cemetery, as the Hogback Cemetery was nearly full. This burial ground was located farther down the mountain from Jerome, on flatland closer to Clarkdale.

As with the Hogback, many of those interred are Mexican, owing to the mining companies’ penchant for employing Latino workers because they could pay them less than white men. After the mines closed and Jerome very nearly became a ghost town, burials virtually ended at the Jerome Pioneer Cemetery.

The last official burial here was in 1939, although four unauthorized burials are believed to have occurred since then, with the most recent in 1981. Over the years, the cemetery was ravaged by neglect and vandals. According to the Jerome Historical Society, only about 200 of the approximately 700 graves here have been identified.

Today, while attempts have been made to clean up the cemetery by concerned citizens and Boy Scout troops, it still shows the ravages of time. Fortunately, vandalism has tapered off some by the recent encroachment of housing development near the cemetery.

These undated photographs are probably from the 1960s and show the decay and neglect that befell the Jerome Pioneer Cemetery after the mines had closed. Indeed, for a while, the town itself had not fared much better. (Above, courtesy of Jerome Historical Society HVY-20-8; below, courtesy of Jerome Historical Society HVY-20-10.)

Today, efforts have been made to clean up the cemetery, but it remains overgrown with brush and encroached by development.

This is the sign to the Jerome Pioneer Cemetery as it appears today. It was crafted by hand, but the craftsman is still unidentified. No one officially has charge of the cemetery.

Some graves in both of Jerome’s cemeteries are still cared for individually by relatives of those interred.

Unfortunately, like many cemeteries across the nation whose graves show the ravages of time, as the ones pictured here, the natural deterioration of markers and tombstones is seen across all regions and climates of the country.

One of the disputed burial sites of famed Jerome/Clarkdale lawman “Uncle” Jim Roberts, who died in 1934. Most historians believe he is buried in Valley View Cemetery in Clarkdale, but a marker for him is also located here in the Jerome Pioneer Cemetery, in a plot with a child named Myrtle Griffin who died of hookworm in 1922. There is no known connection between Roberts and the child.