Saint Mary's Catholic Cemetery, Gilroy, California

When I travelled to California in July, my friend Jon and I chanced upon this cemetery in Gilroy. We were driving back from the San Jose airport and I pointed out the cemetery as we passed. We must have spent a couple hours roaming the grounds. I'm so grateful that I have friends who understand and indulge my quirky sides.

This cemetery is quite large and well contained. It also feels divided, with the more older families on one side while the newer graves take up most of the other. Many of the graves date from the mid 1800's and it's obvious where the older, pioneer families are buried. Most pioneer families had plots and many of the the headstones were quite large. Many of the older graves were lacking green grass, something that a native Washingtonian like me would find strange. The ground was dust and rock and sticky clay where the sprinklers were raining down.

The newer graves had more grass but were incredibly crowded together. They were also quite ornate with lots of angels, Mary and Jesus statues. It was an interesting contrast. The newer section also had a huge statue of Jesus, as well as a shrine of sorts to Mary. I wondered if the older section used to be more secular, for there seemed to be less religious references on that side. In any case, there were plenty of interesting headstones and names to discover. Including a woman named Salome, which made me smile.

I love detailed and ornate headstones.

This grave was quite a contrast to the more sedate headstones nearby.

This cemetery also had a fantastic number of beautiful trees.

I saw several headstones with hands, either pointing upward or to the side. I really need to get my reference books so I can look these things up. I expect I will do a post sometime in the near future about the different ones I've discovered.

This headstone struck me in it's age and broken-ness.