Why We Had Two Sunnyside Cemeteries

Long Beach may contain some of the earliest burial grounds in California. Home of the Tongva natives, the eastern portion of Long Beach contains a dozen or more archeological sites that are believed to be ceremonial and burial sites.

The non-native cemeteries of Long Beach came in the late 1870s and early 1900s and are the final resting places of those born here and the many more who came in search of a better, healthier and calmer life. There were doctors, bankers, real estate developers, teachers, politicians, lawyers, farmers, writers, evangelists, activists, entertainers and military veterans. They were their spouses, siblings and children.

Two of the Long Beach cemeteries are located on Signal Hill. These were originally farm lots in the American Colony and were thought to be largely unusable land because of the slope. In its earliest days, the Municipal Cemetery was known as Signal Hill Cemetery. It is not known for certain who is buried in the Municipal Cemetery because burial records were not required to be kept before 1905, and a fire destroyed much of the records in 1936. A headstone marking the 1878 death of 17-year-old Milton Neece appears to be the oldest in the cemetery.

The records for Sunnyside Cemetery are much more complete. The first plot purchased in 1907 was for Dr. A. Rhea, a retired Civil War physician who was deaf and was hit by a trolley while bicycling. His grave is the site for the most notable marker in the cemetery: The Angel of Sorrows.

Sunnyside and the Municipal Cemetery contain hundreds of Union and Confederate veterans of the Civil War, including Abraham Cleag, a former slave who served as a private in Company A of the 1st Colored Heavy Artillery Regiment in Knoxville, and later as a janitor in the Long Beach City Hall. Nelson Ward, a Union Medal of Honor recipient, is buried in Sunnyside as is Alexander Lawson, who served as the city’s third prosecutor. Only Sunnyside has a dedicated Civil War section on its westside.

The 1921 discovery in Signal Hill of one of the largest oil fields in the world, sparked an intense and long battle for oil drilling rights in and adjacent to the two cemeteries as thousands of oil derricks surrounded them. A second Sunnyside cemetery was opened in 1922 several miles to the north, with advertisements offering to remove and rebury those in the older Sunnyside.

The new, ornate Sunnyside Mausoleum and Memorial Park attracted many families who liked the idea of an elegant funeral that cost little more than burial in the deteriorating Municipal and older Sunnyside cemeteries.

While the families of the buried in the older Sunnyside Cemetery were denied oil royalties by the court, a portion of the cemetery was sold off to its former “president” who received oil money for many years.

In 1960, Forest Lawn purchased Sunnyside Mausoleum and Memorial Park and made extensive renovations. Today, that Sunnyside is known as Forest Lawn, Long Beach. The older Sunnyside struggles to remain open.

 gerrie@beachcomber.news