Pioneer Cemetery Hill with a Chasing Presence at Night
Cottage Grove, OR 97424
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Public hilltop with cemetery; free access
Access
Limited Access
Steep hillside, rough paths
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1853 · Kalapuya Sacred Site · Oregon Donation Land Act History · Lane County Pioneer Cemetery · Cottage Grove History
Mt. David occupies a prominent position in Cottage Grove's landscape and cultural memory. The Kalapuya, the indigenous people of the Willamette Valley, considered the hill's distinctive rock outcroppings sacred — particularly the southeastern face, which is among the most sacred sites to the 14 bands of Kalapuya. Their creation tradition describes a world made only of stone, into which a woman called Le-lu descended from the stone mountain, carrying two babies she gave to a mother wolf to raise as she surveyed the world. As Le-lu moved, the world grew green with grasses, trees, and water.
Euro-American settlement followed the Oregon Donation Land Act of 1850, which facilitated land claims throughout the Oregon Territory. James Henry and Polly Jones McFarland — having traveled nearly 2,000 miles from Missouri — claimed 640 acres on and around the hill in 1853 and established what became McFarland Cemetery the same year. The property eventually passed within the family to David Green McFarland, for whom the hill is named.
McFarland Cemetery contains burials spanning from 1863 through 2012, representing nearly 150 years of the Cottage Grove community. Among those buried is 'Old Mary' Spores, a Kalapuya woman who survived the diseases that devastated her tribe and worked closely with the McFarlands and neighboring families — known for her fine deerskin gloves. At least three Kalapuya befriended by the McFarlands are buried there, reflecting the complicated social geography of the contact period.
The Cottage Grove Historical Society now owns and is restoring the cemetery, with interpretive displays connecting Kalapuya history to the McFarland family settler history. A 1923 oil-drilling fraud by Rev. David Olsen gave the hill a period of notoriety; early motorcycle competitions in the 1920s and Veatch family sheep pasturing mark later eras.
Sources
The paranormal tradition at Mt. David is structured around pursuit rather than encounter. The accounts describe a force or presence that drives people off the hill after dark — not a static or passive figure, but something that responds to and follows human presence on the hilltop. The specific nature of the pursuing entity is not described; its identity is not established.
Graveyard apparitions are reported separately and separately cited in local circulation. The cemetery's continuous use from 1863 through 2012 gives it a long human record, and the presence of Kalapuya burials alongside settler graves introduces a layered cultural history that may feed the site's atmospheric reputation.
The hill's dual significance — sacred to the Kalapuya, then converted to Euro-American agricultural and cemetery use — is the kind of historical palimpsest that consistently generates paranormal tradition in the Pacific Northwest. The 1923 oil-drilling fraud by Rev. Olsen adds a layer of deliberate deception to the site's history, though that episode is not directly cited in paranormal accounts.
Mt. David is an 881-foot bluff on the west side of Cottage Grove, maintained by the Cottage Grove Historical Society. McFarland Cemetery at the hill's base contains burials from 1863 to 2012. An interpretive area near the cemetery describes the Kalapuya people's history and the McFarland family's pioneer settlement. The hill is reportedly most active after dark — a pursuit presence has been reported.
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