Oil drillers sank through graves in the 1920s; bodies shifted into the ground, and families barricaded the gate in protest
Northwest corner of Willow St and Orange Ave, Signal Hill, CA 90755
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Public cemetery; no admission fee.
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Wheelchair OK
Flat cemetery grounds with paved perimeter roads.
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Photos OK
Est. 1901 · Long Beach Founder William E. Willmore Burial · 1920s Oil Boom Cemetery Wars · Slant Drilling Grave Desecration · Uncovered Native American Burials
Long Beach Municipal Cemetery was established around 1901 on the flat ground at the northwest corner of Willow Street and Orange Avenue in what would become Signal Hill. By the early 1920s it held several hundred burials, including that of William E. Willmore, the real estate developer who laid out the original town of Long Beach in the 1880s, and a substantial number of Native American remains uncovered during early grave-digging operations.
In 1921, the discovery of oil beneath Signal Hill triggered one of the densest petroleum booms in California history. Within a short period, hundreds of derricks sprouted across the hill. Operators used slant-drilling — angled wells that could reach deposits beneath adjacent properties without surface rights — and some wells were angled beneath the cemetery itself. The mechanical vibration and subsurface extraction caused ground movement: headstones tilted and sank, graves were compromised, and oil-saturated muck was reported running across the burial grounds.
Families with relatives interred at the cemetery organized. According to the Signal Tribune (The Beachcomber), they physically barricaded the cemetery entrance to stop further drilling access and held the line for a period before legal and financial pressure ended the standoff. Bodies were relocated — in some cases without definitive records identifying whose remains went where — to a second Sunnyside Cemetery established further from the oil fields.
The cemetery today retains its original footprint, with notable subsidence still visible in sections that bore the worst of the 1920s disturbance. The Native American graves that were uncovered during the earlier period remain unresolved in terms of repatriation or formal documentation.
Sources
The paranormal reputation of Long Beach Municipal Cemetery ties directly to its documented history. Accounts of a woman in a white dress wandering the grounds appear in local ghost lore; these sightings are typically described by visitors who notice the figure moving near the older sections of the cemetery before it disappears. The figure is not associated with any identified individual by name in available sources.
The broader context — bodies relocated without complete records, graves that were mechanically disturbed by oil operations, and the raw family conflict of the Cemetery Wars — has made the site a recurring subject in Long Beach-area ghost lists. The cemetery also holds a number of Native American remains uncovered during 19th- and early-20th-century interments; the manner in which those individuals are documented in local oral tradition tends toward vagueness, and Hauntbound does not further speculate on that connection beyond noting the historical fact of the uncovered burials.
Notable Entities
Walk the grounds of Long Beach Municipal Cemetery, where oil discovery in 1921 transformed a quiet burying ground into what locals called the Cemetery Wars. The signs of the era — tilted headstones, areas of subsidence — persist. The grave of Long Beach founder William E. Willmore is here, as are more than 50 Native American burials uncovered during oil-era excavations.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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