August 29, 2025
With summer winding down, I’m ready to visit ancestral cemeteries. Fall is the perfect season to tramp through graveyards. The weather is cooler, but it’s still pleasant. The bugs are fewer, and there’s little chance of snow covering the headstones you want to see.
Over the last few years, websites such as Find a Grave and Billion Graves have made it possible to visit an ancestor’s grave without ever leaving home. They’re a fantastic way to visit faraway cemeteries that might be hard to get to in person.
I use online cemetery databases frequently. Thanks to them, I’ve been able to virtually visit cemeteries in places like Baker, Montana and Vancouver, Washington. While I’d like to visit in person, it just hasn’t been feasible. Seeing pictures of the headstones of my relatives is the next best thing to being there.
However, whenever I get the chance, I prefer to visit in person. Over the years, I’ve made detours to visit cemeteries whenever I could. For example, one year my husband took a trip to King Mountain, Idaho (near the little town of Arco) for a gliding safari. I tagged along, not because I’m crazy about gliders, but just because I like to see areas I haven’t seen before.
What really sealed the deal for me was that my husband always spent a night in Pocatello, Idaho on his way to King Mountain. Pocatello happens to be the site of Mountain View Cemetery – a cemetery where several of my great grandfather’s siblings are buried. I’d seen their graves online, but I wanted to see them in person.
My husband was pulling a glider, but I wasn’t to be deterred in my quest. The cemetery had narrow, dirt roads that resembled paths. My husband carefully maneuvered the long glider trailer through the roads until we located the gravesites. I hopped out of the truck and took pictures. I wandered around the area and found several other family members.
I’ve never been someone who felt the presence of those who are buried at cemeteries. However, there is something special about walking around the area of a grave and looking at the trees and shrubs and thinking about how it must have been when the burials occurred.
That cemetery visit accompanied by a glider trailer is a memory I won’t forget. Somehow, visiting those relatives’ graves made them more real to me – not just a picture online.
Over the years I’ve visited many other cemeteries in places where my travels don’t usually take me. I’ve always been unexpectedly moved by the experience of visiting some of these seldom visited graves.
Fall is almost here, and I’m off the cemetery again. Or I’d like to be. I just need to figure out a reason to pass through Baker, Montana. I want to see my great grand aunt’s grave there in person.
Carol Stetser
Researcher
Larimer County Genealogical Society