Est. 1850 · Oldest non-sectarian cemetery in Southern California · Founded on Henry Dalton's Rancho Azusa grant · California pioneer era burial records · California Register of Historical Resources
When American settlers began establishing themselves in the San Gabriel Valley in the 1840s and early 1850s, the region had no Protestant or non-sectarian burial grounds. The Catholic missions had their own cemeteries, but for non-Catholic pioneers there was nothing. In 1850, a small parcel of land on what would become the Rosemead-El Monte border was set aside for community burial use — the first such non-sectarian cemetery in the region.
The land was part of Rancho Azusa, a Mexican land grant held by Henry Dalton, an English-born merchant who had become a prominent California landowner. Dalton formally transferred the cemetery parcel in 1851. The site became the primary burial ground for the growing El Monte district, then one of the earliest Anglo-American settlements in Los Angeles County.
Over its more than 170 years of use, Savannah Memorial Park accumulated over 3,700 documented burials. Among the most historically and emotionally significant section is a portion of the grounds given over to orphaned children — graves marked only with the word 'Baby' or a single given name, representing children who died without family or documentation sufficient to provide full identification. The 4-acre facility straddles the Rosemead-El Monte border and remains a functioning cemetery today. It is listed on the California Register of Historical Resources.
Sources
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savannah_Memorial_Park
- https://ohp.parks.ca.gov/ListedResources/Detail/1046
- https://esotouric.com/2010/01/17/savannah/
- https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=127025
Children's voices heard after darkPhantom conversationApparitions in photographsEVP recordings
The paranormal accounts from Savannah Memorial Park center on two distinct phenomena: auditory and visual. The sounds are more commonly reported — voices of children, and what witnesses describe as general conversation, audible after sunset in the section of the cemetery where the orphaned and unidentified children are buried. The voices do not resolve into identifiable words or speakers; they are ambient, heard as a collective rather than as individuals.
The visual accounts are photographic rather than direct apparition sightings. Visitors taking photographs during daylight hours — a detail worth noting, as most cemetery paranormal photography occurs at night — have reported anomalies in the developed or digital images: figures, shapes, and shadows that were not present to the eye during the shot. These accounts circulate primarily through local paranormal enthusiast communities.
EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomenon) recordings made at the site have been documented by investigators and reported online, though the quality and specificity of these recordings is difficult to assess from secondhand description.
The concentration of accounts around the orphaned children's section seems likely to reflect the emotional weight of that particular area — hundreds of graves of people who died without the documentation or family connections to leave a named record — rather than any discrete historical event.
