It’s one thing to read about a person’s legacy in the pages of a book... and quite another to visit their final resting place. This Halloween weekend, you can do just that by taking a Tombstone Twilight Tour at Metro’s Lone Fir Cemetery in Southeast Portland.
The cemetery’s history stretches back to the mid-1800s. Many of the people buried at a handful of smaller cemeteries in downtown Portland were moved to Lone Fir as the city was developed. Those buried at what’s now the athletic field at Central Catholic High School (nicknamed the “Bone Yard”) were also moved. For nearly 50 years, every Portland burial occurred at Lone Fir until River View Cemetery was established.
Lone Fir’s residents include early pioneers, former slaves, activists, Civil War veterans, forty-niners, and members of the Pittock Family. Guests of the Tombstone Twilight Tour on Sun., Oct. 30 will get to know some of them — as well as some of the cemetery’s more notorious residents — during the hour-long walk led by Friends of Lone Fir Cemetery.
