Graveyards Rising From the Depths

Graveyards rising from the lake. Looting in broad daylight.

The year was 1977. Having been plagued by drought for seven years, the river arms that fed Shasta Lake dried up. Manzanita trees withered and died. The lake fell to its lowest level ever and, in the process, a lot of history got revealed.

An old cemetery emerged near where the once thriving town of Kennet used to be. Kennet itself is now so deep under the lake that it never gets exposed.

Lola M. Schwartz - Librarian for the Shasta Historical Society - and her husband, Jim were boating on Lake Shasta that summer and saw this amazing sight.

“It was very exciting”, she remembers. There was a black wrought-iron fence all around that cemetery. It looked brand new – the water had preserved it. And you could tell where the graves were. Those that had been moved were sunken and those that (remained) were smooth.”

Throughout that summer, Lola and Jim visited the cemetery often. In a later visit, Schwartz found the fence was missing – someone had stolen it!

Can you imagine it? Was it late afternoon or early evening? A boat pulls up. Perhaps several men get out. With a few tools, a lot of sweat and struggle, they work to pull the black metal from its long embedded sanctuary. Did they think about the people buried there as they toiled to steal the boundary marking their final resting place? Or was this simply easy pickings – an opportunity to get cheap fencing? We’ll never know – no one saw them with their plunder.

Many other things showed up that year. More than a hundred prehistoric Indian sites were revealed across the dried-up lakebed. Many of these had been along the original rivers and creeks. According to a retired archeologist of the Forest Service, some of these sites dated back more than 500 years!

A lot of artifacts were found by the Forest Service. Milling stones, net weights, things that go back as far as 4,000 years. These were left there for their “protection”. However looting became rampant and many disappeared. Because of this, the Forest Service later removed the artifacts, establishing collections at both Shasta College and at the Visitor’s Center at Shasta Lake. Many of these can still be seen.

Sad to say, so much of our local history has disappeared. Though pictures remain, we forget the rich tapestry of lives and events that happened within the past hundred years. So many stories yet to tell.