SOUP CAN CEMETERY- The Chanate Historic Cemetery

The dates on the timeline for the SOUP CAN CEMETERY tell the sad story of “HOW AND WHY" the County of Sonoma purchased 100 acres in 1875 for a "Poor Farm" for indigents. Located at 3322 Chanate Road, Santa Rosa, California, the pauper-or-“indigent graveyard" was "in-use” from 1877-1944.
Abandoned and neglected, the "indigent cemetery” and its grave-markers of old “soup cans, was abandoned in 1944. Without maintenance, the graveyard was forgotten. Today, with volunteer effort and research, the graves have been found and mapped, and the historic site cleared of poison oak and overgrown, tangled vegetation, and is officially called the CHANATE HISTORIC CEMETERY. (Dedication 2012)
Documented with photographs, the neglected cemetery timeline, gives the historical significance of tuberculosis and infectious disease and the building of Sonoma County's Isolation Hospital- OAK KNOLL SANATORIUM, dedicated in 1937.
The cemetery's timeline would not be complete without including The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1892, the Federal Law and political reason WHY, all the Chinese were buried in County Farm "public owned” indigent-cemetery. The SOUP CAN CEMETERY timeline is a valuable historical resource for all to enjoy.
(pages-92, pictures-61)