This cache is placed as a tribute to the early pioneers and settlers of Douglas Wyoming. We solicit your support as a cacher to place a "Spirit" cache in or near a cemetery of your choice.
The Douglas Pioneer Cemetery is a registered Wyoming State Historical Site, and was the communities first burial ground from 1886 to 1902. With more than 100 burial sites, Douglas' first cemetery is located on the south side of the Highway 59 bypass, between West Yellowstone Highway and North 4th Street.
Some of the area’s earliest citizens, including some very colorful characters, are buried at Pioneer Cemetery north of Douglas.
In 1886, the year Douglas incorporated, the town's first official cemetery opened in "Poverty Flats," a bit of prairie north of the tent town. The first person to be buried there was one A.H. Meyers, the loser in a gunfight
As the turn of the century approached, the citizenry had to decide whether to replace their old cemetery. Though it was less than 15 years old, backers of a new burial ground pressed their case. One of the most vocal was Bill Barlow, the witty and sometimes acid-tongued editor of the Douglas Budget newspaper.
"If there is one thing above another that Douglas needs, it is a cemetery somewhere within reach and one that could be made in a fairly half-way presentable condition," Barlow editorialized in 1899. "It fairly gives a man the horrors to think of being buried in the dismal out-of-the way sand hill now being used for that purpose."
Two years passed without a decision. Then Barlow fired another salvo. "Every death accentuates the fact that we need a cemetery," he wrote. "The one in use now is too far from town and where neither trees nor grass can be made to grow - a bleak sandy waste." Just two months later, the project was underway. Now called Douglas Park Cemetery, it has been in use since 1902.
The Pioneer Cemetery, as it’s now called, remains on the site today.
For more information on this historic treasure, contact the Community Development Departmentat 307-358-2132.
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