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With the exception of the churchyard behind Mission Dolores and the National Cemetery in the Presidio, all of San Francisco’s gorgeous Victorian-era cemeteries were evicted from the city in the early 1930s and relocated to Colma, a planned city of the dead just below Daly City where the dead outnumber the living 1,000 to 1.
The process of moving hundreds of thousands of graves to Colma wasn’t an easy one, and as history has shown, it wasn’t even complete. Constant development and renovations in San Francisco have revealed that many of the city’s dead never made it to their new resting place, raising questions about the role that cemeteries play in our lives and what we owe to the dead.
The story of San Francisco is one of rapid development, for the living—a very specific segment of the living. A city without the dead, or any memorial to them, is a place without history. It is the story of the Bay Area.
Jessica Ferri is a writer and photographer based in Northern California. She is the author of Silent Cities New York and Silent Cities San Francisco, and a book critic for the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post. She is the owner of Womb House Books.
