Grave concern: Historians upset over trail's location

City leaders said they had no choice when building sidewalk through historic cemetery grounds.

Mike Capshaw/Herald-Leader The view of the sidewalk as it enters Hico Cemetary. Several historians believe the city should have found a different route instead of building the sidewalk through what once was filled with tombstones on graves of the city's early settlers and founders.
Mike Capshaw/Herald-Leader The view of the sidewalk as it enters Hico Cemetary. Several historians believe the city should have found a different route instead of building the sidewalk through what once was filled with tombstones on graves of the city's early settlers and founders.

A concrete sidewalk slices through the heart of a cemetery that is the final resting place for the founders of Siloam Springs.

Is it progress, or a sign of declining moral values? Depends on who's asked.

City leaders contend they had no choice and did everything possible to preserve the site. Area historians say they're appalled a municipality would "desecrate" such a sacred place with an eight-foot wide slab of concrete.

It's not the first time the city of Siloam Springs has dishonored Hico Cemetery.

In 1976, concerns over vandalism at the cemetery, which includes many headstones from the 1800s, resulted in the city deciding to remove the headstones. It created a memorial with circular pattern of tombstones -- including veterans of the Civil War and Mexican War as well as early founders Simon Sager and John V. Hargrove -- facing a large dedication stone in the middle. It can still be seen.

"The graves themselves are still buried in the yard around the renovated center where the stones sit," according to a story from John Brown University's Threefold Advocate newspaper in 2013.

The trail that runs through the old cemetery is part of the Siloam Springs Sidewalk & Trail Master Plan.

"If only one person is upset about it, there's probably 300 to 400 people upset who you don't hear about," said Rick Parker, who has deep family roots in Siloam Springs and works on historical restoration on a local and international level. "I wouldn't want to go through my life and be OK with putting a hiking and biking trail over a cemetery. It's appalling and to say I'm disappointed is an understatement. It's just patently wrong.

"This administration is only partially culpable. It shouldn't have been done back in the '70s, but to come back now, knowing the place was screwed up before, and to screw it up again, you simply don't do it. I understand the city wanting to get out of this with as little egg on their face as possible, but it's too late. They've got egg all over their face."

The circular monument sits along the top of a cliff above downtown Siloam Springs and nestled into a curve in the road along Tahlequah Street. The street narrows around that awkward corner, making visibility an issue for motorists and pedestrians alike. That is why the city couldn't put the sidewalk alongside the road and, instead, went through the old cemetery grounds. A few unmarked foot stones from old graves are still visible near the new path.

Due to a high number of pedestrians trekking through the area, the trail along Tahlequah Street was ranked by the city as the fifth most urgent project of the master trail plan. Before the sidewalk was built, people often walked a similar path. It's not fenced or marked in any way that the open area near the current monument was once a cemetery, so many pedestrians probably were unaware that they likely were walking over graves.

Least impact

"So what is government?" said city administrator Phillip Patterson. "It's a balancing act of competing ideas, of competing goals, or competing issues. So, here we have protection of the cemetery, the need to give pedestrians access, so how do we balance those needs? How do we balance that?

"We think that's what we've done to the best of our ability."

City engineer Justin Bland said city staff looked at "multiple routes" for the proposed trail in the area. If the trail went along the roadway like other parts of the master plan system, then a significant amount of dirt work would have been required. Plus, there was still the issue of safety because a hill and other factors contribute to a lack of visibility as motorists wind around the corner. The route was chosen "due to the least impact," Bland said.

Siloam Springs senior planner Don Clark echoed Bland's talking points about the final choice of the trail's path.

"If you look at Washington Street and Tahlequah in the morning, you have a high traffic of kids walking to school, which is why this was such an important project," Clark said. "Now they have a path because there is no shoulder when coming around that roadway, it is very narrow. It's difficult to see and safety was a priority.

"If you remember three years ago, that place was flooded with people playing Pokeman Go. They probably had no idea that that was an actual cemetery."

Use of Ground Penetrating Radar

Bland said city staff used a Ground Penetrating Radar unit to identify where the graves were in the cemetery. The equipment is utilized to "reclaim" old grave sites at Oak Hill Cemetery. Many plots were sold in pairs to married couples in the early 1900s, but occasionally, only one spouse ended up buried there.

Ground Penetrating Radar transmits a high frequency, electromagnetic energy signal into the ground to target the depth and location of items under the soil. Historians argue that many of the graves at Hico Cemetery were shallow due to its location on a rocky hill. In addition, many people buried were wrapped only in a blanket, so there would be no nails from the corner of a typical pine box casket used in those days to find.

In other words, there was no concrete way of making sure the concrete path didn't flow over a grave site, although a concerted effort was made to keep that from happening.

"This GPR unit does not need a burial vault to detect a grave and can detect shallow grave sites," Bland wrote in an email. "Using this information, staff was able to determine that the graves were on a certain grid system. A route was chosen through this grid to avoid all detected graves and minimize impact as much as possible.

"Furthermore, the trail section was modified such that just the grass was scraped off the existing ground. Typically, a trail section would be dug much deeper. Now that the grass has been scraped off, we can verify that no graves were disturbed and to the best of our knowledge, utilizing the techniques above, the trail doesn't cross over any graves."

'That is sacred land'

Still, Siloam Springs museum director Don Warden was concerned when he first noticed the proposed trail would be running through Hico Cemetery. City staff eased Warden's mind when he was informed about the investigation using the GPR unit.

"A lot of prominent, important people to the town's history are out there," Warden said. "People will see the sidewalk and people will be concerned that the graves were still out there. I'm not sure how many people know that, but you can see foundations where other headstones were out there and a few foot stones. I've always felt like the bodies were still out there, although a few graves were moved out to Oak Hill (in the 1970s).

"The city made every attempt not to go over any graves. Not that they didn't go over any graves, but if they did, not that many. I have no way of knowing that for sure."

Not knowing for sure is exactly what is of grave concern for local historians. Regardless of if exact graves were located, they believe the sidewalk should have never been built through a historic graveyard. City leaders should have simply "found a different route," said Glenn Jones, a self-proclaimed "old historian." Jones recently stepped down after 10 years as head of the Benton County Historic Preservation Commission.

"Am I against it? Absolutely," said Jones, who has been working with towns in Benton County to earn Purple Heart City designations. "This is totally disrespectful; you don't build over the top of them. I don't know how in good conscious that any city could say they think the graves are no longer there, so let's build a sidewalk over it.

"That is sacred land. Whoever thought building a sidewalk through an ancient cemetery is a good idea is beyond me. Respect the people who built Siloam Springs and the people buried there."

Jones said he's familiar with the use of GPR to identify grave sites as he helped preserve the Mount Hebron Church and cemetery, which is located between Lowell and Cave Springs. Jones said things like this are "all about progress" and didn't start happening until the 1970s when "it all became about money."

"This situation really boggles my mind as a long-time local historian," Jones said. "You can't prove what's under the ground with GPR. You really can't, unless you dig it up, which is something they would do in New York City, not Siloam Springs, Arkansas.

"Especially in the Ozark soil, which is highly acidic, the only thing a GPR can identify is moved dirt."

City sensitive, respectful

Bob Highfill has lived in Siloam Springs for 70 years and said people buried at Hico Cemetery "deserve respect." He believes the city should have found a way to preserve and maintain the site better than building a sidewalk through it.

"They desecrated a cemetery as far as I'm concerned," Highfill said. "They knew what they were doing and figured it was better to ask for forgiveness instead of asking for permission.

"When your city leaders decide to go through a cemetery, that this is a priority, then there is something wrong with our thinking."

Highfill and both historians contacted for this article believe the only solution is for the city to tear up the sidewalk and replant sod in its place. Then, erect signs informing pedestrians and other visitors to the area about how this was the final resting place of Siloam Springs' founding fathers.

City leaders said they tried to disturb the ground as little as possible, so they only ended up taking off the top four inches of dirt for the foundation of the sidewalk, which is usually much deeper. In addition, the city plans to put a bench and signs at both sides of the trail to inform people about the historical significance of the area.

Because the history of the cemetery includes a time when past city leaders made a controversial decision to clear out the tombstones, the current administration was "super sensitive" to try to be "respectful" of the area, Patterson said.

"I drive by there, not every day, but almost every day, and I don't see any people milling around," Patterson said. "So, if you really want to preserve something like that, put out a sign, which is what we're talking about doing with some sort of historical marker and a bench to make it known publicly.

"Now, more people who walk by there will know what it is and it becomes more to the community than just some corner."

People in shock

Parker said the sidewalk through the Hico Cemetery came up earlier this month during a Heritage Trail meeting, which is part of the Northwest Arkansas Regional Planning Commission's Open Space committee. He said people's "mouths dropped wide open" over their "shock" from learning what had happened in Siloam Springs. He said the sidewalk "casts a shadow on Siloam Springs" as a town willing to cast aside its heritage in order to build a sidewalk through "one of the most historic places in town."

"What do you think would happen in Fayetteville if this was done at the Evergreen Cemetery off Dickson Street where a lot of Fayetteville's preeminent founders are buried?" Parker said. "Maybe this happens in another town when the city needs to cut into a cemetery's space to build a new road or something else. Hopefully, that won't happen, but when something like this does happen, we've got to jump on it and do what we can to correct it. Everyone makes mistakes. Just admit it and fix it.

"This is going to be up to the board (of directors) as far as fixing it. They should take the time to do it. It won't be popular to pull up the slabs because people will see it as a waste of money, but this is the right thing to do.

"We have a wonderful history here and, every once in a while, people screw things up like this."

General News on 03/28/2018