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1. Lone Fir Cemetery
Buckman, 649 SE 26th Ave.
Est. 1846
Size: 31 acres
Who’s who: Early Portland founders and pioneer families.
Notables interred: Asa Lovejoy, the Portland co-founder who, had he won that coin flip, would have named us after Beantown; Rose Festival co-founder and Forest Park mansion matriarch Georgiana Burton Pittock.
This is the only Portland graveyard listed in the book 222 Cemeteries to See Before You Die. The entry cites the must-see grave of Dr. James C. Hawthorne, who opened the Oregon Hospital for the Insane in 1862. Many (132) of his patients are buried at Lone Fir, too. Among them, in an unmarked grave, is Charity Lamb, who murdered her husband with an ax.
2. Rose City Cemetery
Cully, 5625 NE Fremont St.
Est. 1906
Size: 105 acres
Who gets in? Gen pop.
Notables interred: Theodore Thurston Geer, Oregon’s 10th governor, who reportedly biked to work throughout his term running 1899 to 1903 and signed legislation to create a statewide network of bike paths; Frank Ellis, a Romani leader or “King of Gypsies,” per his 1966 Oregon Journal obit.
The gigantic nondenominational graveyard holds, by some estimates, north of 50,000 gravestones. It’s home to several mausoleums, a Volga German grounds, the formerly incorporated Japanese Ancestral Cemetery, and a Romani burial section. The latter features traditionally elaborate headstones, many with photographs, and has hosted large-scale Romani wakes for decades—often drawing complaints from ignorant neighbors. It’s perhaps the best place in the city to wander and wonder about what was. It’s also apparently where a lot of McDaniel High School students have their senior picture taken.
3. Wilhelm’s Portland Mausoleum
Sellwood, 6705 SE 14th Ave.
Est. 1901
Size: 6 acres (building and adjacent grounds), over 5 miles of hallways of crypts.
What’s the deal? It’s an indoor, eight-story private mausoleum.
Notables interred: Labor and women’s rights advocate Dr. Marie Equi; highway builder John Yeon and his famed architect son of the same name; Franz Bakery co-founder Joseph Franz; several members of the Jantzen swimwear and knitting company family.
You can see it as you hike around Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge, but you can’t go inside except on special public days. Security was more lax once upon a time, but word is that after Chuck Palahniuk set a chunk of his 1999 novel, Survivor, in the mausoleum and then called it a “fantastic city of death” in his 2003 travelogue, Fugitives and Refugees, hooligans descended on the crypts. That said, mere weeks ago, a couple stole a bunch of urns to sell for drug money.
4. Beth Israel Cemetery
Southwest Hills, 426 SW Taylors Ferry Road
Est. 1856 (it was Mount Sinai Cemetery until 1862)
Size: 3.5 acres
Who gets in? Local Jewish congregants.
Notables interred: Julius Meier, Oregon’s 20th governor and co-founder of the Meier & Frank department store chain; U.S. senators and married couple Richard and Maurine Neuberger; actress and TV producer Caroline Burke.
Though it’s recognized as the oldest continually running Jewish cemetery in the U.S., Beth Israel Cemetery and the affiliated synagogue have a long history of interfaith community building. For example, when the original synagogue suffered an arson attack in 1923 (“Flames Laid to Firebug,” was the line in the Oregon Journal), several area churches loaned space while the congregation rebuilt. Also during the fire, a Christian caretaker named Theodore Olsen reportedly saved several prayer books and congregational records from the burning building. After his 47 years in the Beth Israel employ, he was interred in its grounds.
5. River View Cemetery
South Portland, 300 S Taylors Ferry Road
Est. 1882
Size: 350 acres
The general vibe: Early Portland elite and pioneer families. Shortness of breath.
Notables interred: Prominent Portland brewer and gourmet soda maker Henry Weinhard; members of the Terwilliger family, early pioneers and namesakes of Terwilliger Boulevard.
Though it is the forever home for much of early Portland’s beau monde, River View Cemetery is most famous today for the hill that gives it that namesake view. It’s where all the westside long distance runners and cyclists who need to train on an incline run and bike. It’s a nasty 500-foot elevation gain from the bottom of the cemetery near the Willamette River up to the top, through the cemetery, to Burlingame. Taylors Ferry Road runs parallel to Riverview Cemetery but there are no sidewalks (because Southwest Portland) so everyone runs and bikes through the cemetery’s paved road instead.
6. Jones Cemetery
Southwest Hills, 5763 SW Hewett Blvd.
Est. 1854
Size: 3.5 acres
The dead in question? A “a zany old pioneer hermit” named Nathan B. Jones and his father, William Jones. Nathan erected a joint family gravestone when burying William in 1854 and found himself under it after he was murdered 40 years later.
A 2022 WW story titled “You Can Find Portland’s Buried Treasure” lays out a newish theory about a hidden fortune, with an important disclaimer: “Before we tell you more about what to do when you get there (besides NOT digging in a fucking cemetery, of course!), let’s lay out the story.” The story is that Jones was an eccentric who hoarded the 320 acres he got for moving out west thanks to the Donation Land Claim Act. His life’s work was a failed but nevertheless annoying scheme to build a psychedelic village of sorts (ahead of his time, perhaps). After he sold off a chunk of land in 1894 for $6,000, or about $235,000 today, robbers killed him. The theory is that the Jones story matches an 1862 treasure map that promises a $6,000 fortune split between two graves. The map is drawn with crayon (actually), but it’s legit enough to be housed at the Oregon Historical Society.
