El Campo Santo
Pioneer-era graveyard where dozens of graves still lie sealed beneath a paved street.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to El Campo Santo cemetery in San Diego's Old Town starts at a small metal disc stamped GRAVE, sunk into the asphalt of San Diego Avenue, marking one of more than twenty bodies discovered beneath the street in a nineteen ninety-three ground-penetrating radar survey. It traces the burial ground back to its opening in eighteen forty-nine as San Diego's Catholic cemetery, where close to four hundred seventy-seven people were laid to rest by eighteen eighty, among them a Cupeno chief executed by firing squad and a man hanged for stealing the only rowboat in the bay. In eighteen eighty-nine, a horse-drawn streetcar line arrived and the city faced a choice about the route it would take through consecrated ground.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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