Potter’s Field in Tacoma. Dear husband and I went to the Wheelock Library to attend an interesting lecture about Tacoma’s Haunted History on Saturday and I learned about Tacoma’s Potter’s Field. I hadn’t realized that about 1,600 were buried on this two acre site between the 1880s and the 1920s. These were the people that had no funds to afford a proper funeral and their remains became the responsibility of the Pierce County. There is an excellent article about the cemetery here. We took a driving tour through the lovely Tacoma and Oakwood Cemeteries to finally find the Pauper’s Cemetery situated adjacent to the Tacoma Mausoleum. I recognized the wooden boundary fence from the video in the News Tribune article. The cemetery itself isn’t accessible to the public, but I did snap a shot from an opening in the fence. It was fascinating to me that while there were just a couple of headstones in sight, there are a reported 1,600 individuals are interred here in unmarked graves. Two of the photos show the fence that divides the Potter’s Field from the maintained cemetery near the mausoleum. There are also a couple of photos of the other two cemeteries.
