Quick Take
Every Friday, 22-year-old Phoebe Blackman pulls weeds and clears garbage from Santa Cruz’s Evergreen Cemetery, where gold prospectors, Civil War veterans and immigrants lie buried. Though rich in history, the 1858 cemetery has long suffered cycles of neglect. Now in the hands of the Museum of Art & History— without dedicated funding or staff — its future depends on volunteers like her, who are determined to preserve the stories of those long gone. The community, she says, needs to take more responsibility for the cemetery and the stories and local history it holds.
Have something to say? Lookout welcomes letters to the editor, within our policies, from readers. Guidelines here.
Every Friday morning, I stand among the dead.
It’s an unusual pastime for a 22-year-old college student, but I feel compelled. Beneath my muddied shoes, 2,000 people who once walked among us have found eternal rest. They were gold prospectors who bet it all on California’s dirt and Civil War veterans, Chinese immigrants and shipwrecked sailors, infants who never took a single step and pioneers who had narrowly avoided the fate of the Donner Party.
Tucked into the lush hillside of Santa Cruz’s Harvey West Park, the dead rest at Evergreen, one of the state’s oldest cemeteries, established in 1858. The cemetery began as 7 acres of land donated by the Imus family, contemporaries of the Donner Party. After burying two of their own, James Prewitt contributed another acre, solidifying Evergreen’s role as the community’s final resting place.
I fear their stories will disappear.
Evergreen Cemetery’s history has always been turbulent. For more than a century, it has teetered between care and neglect, stuck in a cycle of restoration efforts that pop up every few decades before vanishing again. The cemetery lay relatively untouched before the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History (MAH) took custodianship in 2008. The archives of the Santa Cruz Sentinel trace this pattern of care and neglect — a new generation regularly rediscovers Evergreen, picks the weeds, plasters the stones and insists it will be different this time.
Today, the MAH is its custodian — not by choice, but as a condition of expanding its property. The acquisition came with no dedicated funding, no full-time staff and no long-term preservation plan. Evergreen became an institutional responsibility without institutional support. Its care now depends on volunteers.
I am one of them.
Each week, we show up — rakes and gloves in hand — to clear brush, pick up trash and fend off nature’s quiet encroachment. Many among us are community members, but some are museum staff who give their own time, unpaid, simply because they care. Their commitment is deep and personal, and a strong community of people has emerged. Evergreen is not neglected for lack of love; it’s held together by people who show up, week after week.
Our work is substantial, but its permanence is not. One storm, one season without enough hands, and years of progress could disappear.
This precarity isn’t new. In the late 1950s, construction of the Highway 1-Highway 9 intersection severed the cemetery from downtown, cutting off Evergreen’s direct connection to the city. Without easy access and only a few modern plots, its place in the community faded and its care became less of a priority. In 1973, Renie Leaman began organizing cleanup efforts. She enlisted Cabrillo College students to help restore the decay of the cemetery, forming a group called H.E.L.P. — Help Evergreen Live Permanently. The group documented burial records, led tours and kept the cemetery in working order for a time. But like every effort before, this one relied on volunteers. And without a dedicated funding source, it eventually faded.
Evergreen is not abandoned, nor is it in complete disarray. But I worry it is always on the verge of being forgotten.
A neglected cemetery becomes vulnerable to vandalism, litter and erasure from history. Often we have to pick up trash, bottles and discarded items from the grounds. It’s fair to ask why public funds should go to a cemetery when urgent needs like housing and education demand attention. I don’t see this as an either/or question.
Preserving the legacy of the dead does not mean ignoring the living; the two are intertwined. A community that forgets its past loses part of its identity. Caring for this space not only shows respect to the dead, but respect for our community’s history.
The MAH, for all it has done in archiving Santa Cruz history, has no systemic support for Evergreen. The city provides no funding. The responsibility has been passed from generation to generation, each time with the same good intentions, but without a real commitment to making it last.
Evergreen has survived because people continue to fight for it. Santa Cruz prides itself on preservation. We fight to protect redwoods, historic buildings and the beautiful homes that line our streets. But we cannot call ourselves a city that values history while allowing our oldest cemetery to be sustained by nothing but goodwill.
Death defines this space. Over time, headstones and burial sites become the last sentimental specks of a life once lived — the only places where love and grief still linger. As generations dim, records may preserve names and dates, but only these memorials hold the intimacy of those once remembered.
Other cemeteries across Santa Cruz and California survive through dedicated funding, preservation trusts, and partnerships with universities. Evergreen could, too. A trust could be established under the MAH. UC Santa Cruz history students could take on maintenance and research. The city, which funds other historical preservation efforts, could recognize that Evergreen is no less a part of Santa Cruz’s history than other local landmarks.
But for now, Evergreen remains, held together by those who won’t let the brush overtake the stories of Santa Cruz’s past. We gather every Friday morning from 9:30 a.m. to noon. Join us. We are the ones who ensure Evergreen lives on.
Without recognition, without a plan, Evergreen will only survive until the next time people stop showing up. History does not disappear on its own. We let it.
Phoebe Blackman is a 22-year-old anthropology and literature student at UC Santa Cruz. She volunteers at Evergreen Cemetery, where she finds joy in connecting the past and present, making history feel tangible and relevant. She wrote this piece as part of Lookout Community Voices editor and UCSC professor Jody K. Biehl’s winter journalism class.