Strangers’ Plot, Mountain View Cemetery, Oakland, California (JL)
Strangers’ Plot is a section near the entrance of Mountain View Cemetery where over 500+ individuals were buried anonymously between 1863 and World War I. Covered now with redwood trees, this was the final resting place for the poor, immigrants, unknowns, suicides, criminals and even babies. No marker or monument commemorates the dead, and on maps of the cemetery, Strangers’ Plot is shown only as area “S.”
In 2011, Mountain View Cemetery docent Gaye Lenahan published research conducted over a 15-year period. ”For the longest time I thought this was just a grassy hillside. But there are people here.”1
