Research suggests burial ground may be near areas surveyed

CROWS LANDING - The high-tech search for a small pioneer cemetery believed to exist in the area where a massive industrial park is planned revealed no evidence of graves beneath the three sites surveyed.

But while state-of-the-art research tools, including ground-penetrating radar, yielded no trace of a cemetery on the Crows Landing airfield property, more traditional research produced nuggets of information suggesting that the burial ground may be located just across (and partially covered by) Bell Road.

West Side historian Pat Snoke of Gustine said she was disappointed but not surprised that the survey did not find evidence of graves - but is excited that the research identified a possible location of the pioneer cemetery, even if it wasn’t where first thought.

“I am very happy with the report,” Snoke wrote in an email. “While it was not found where we had been told it was located, it was found anyway, just across the road (from the air base property) with part of it being possibly covered by part of Bell Road. Years ago I had heard that Joey Frances (who worked at the base for many years) had said it was just outside the east gate of the base, and I guess he was right. I am satisfied that Brian has found our cemetery.”

According to consulting geophysicist Brian Damiata’s report released last week, Frances was interviewed for the study and recalled that sometime in the early 1940s he and other workers discovered tombstones lying by the side of the road at the northeastern corner of the intersection of Bell and Ike Crow roads - near but outside the base entry.

An aerial photograph in 1937 shows a half-acre parcel of unplowed land along the eastern side of the airbase property. Part of that has since been paved over by Bell Road, while the remainder is being actively farmed.

Snoke has a personal interest in the pioneer cemetery. Her family research indicates that her great-grandmother and her great-grandmother’s son were both buried in a Crows Landing cemetery in the 1880s.

Now she believes that she knows - at least generally - their final resting place.

“They are in that field somewhere, and that’s where they are going to stay,” she declared. “They’ve been there for 130 years; let them be.”

The three sites investigated by Damiata were all within the planned boundaries of West Park, a planned 4,800-acre inland port, business and commercial park.

A site just inside the east entrance to the base was considered a prime possibility, based in part on the towering cypress trees consistent with those said to have bordered the cemetery. But researchers determined that the trees date only back to the time the airfield was developed in the early 1940s. The trees were not visible in the 1937 aerial photographs.

Keith Boggs, deputy executive officer for Stanislaus County, said Damiata’s team was extremely thorough in its research.

“We did not find any markings that would lead us to believe that there is a cemetery on the footprint that we are responsible for,” he commented. “We have done our due diligence for the Crows Landing footprint, and we have a report that is sound.”

That’s not to say that no pioneer cemetery exists in the area, Boggs stressed, and the county and West Park developers will be discussing with local historians how that can be commemorated as the project moves forward.

West Park developer Gerry Kamilos funded the research.