San Diego has the distinction of being the birthplace of California so it only makes sense that it is also home to one of the state’s oldest graveyards. The El Campo Santo Cemetery in Old Town was founded in 1849 after California officially became a part of the United States. This graveyard has the reputation of a not-so-peaceful final resting place for many a soul.
The old graveyard proved to be located in a quite inconvenient spot for a growing San Diego, and many bodies were dug up and relocated to Calvary Cemetery, an auxiliary Catholic cemetery located up in the Mission Hills. A trolley route was built through the cemetery, and later paved over to create what is now San Diego Avenue.
The unruly motif of disturbing dead bodies soon spread to Calvary Cemetery, where bodies were once again moved, plowed over, or relocated back to El Campo Santo in a ghastly game of deathly hot potato. All of this mayhem created a lot of restless spirits that roam the cemeteries to this day. Some of the graves at El Campo Santo in Old Town remained where they were, and now lay beneath the street, sidewalks and buildings of Old Town.
Calvary Cemetery fell into a sad state of disrepair and the souls that remained were treated to some rather foul and disrespectful atrocities during their quest for rest. Today the cemetery is known as Pioneer Park and a clump of headstones can be seen where they were rudely shoved aside in the past. As for Old Town, the next time you go to Don Pietro for happy hour, gaze down at your feet. You may be quite literally partying with the dead!
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