Est. 1848 · Utah Pioneer History · Jean Baptiste Grave-Robbing Scandal · Largest Municipal Cemetery in the U.S. · Orrin Porter Rockwell
Salt Lake City's cemetery began in 1848 when George Wallace buried his daughter Mary on land set aside east of the settlement's residential core. The city formalized the grounds in 1851 with its municipal incorporation and has maintained them continuously since, making it the oldest civic institution of its kind in Utah.
The cemetery became the site of a sustained criminal operation beginning around 1859. Jean Baptiste, a gravedigger employed by the city, spent roughly three years systematically stripping recently buried bodies of their burial clothes. When police officer Henry Heath noticed that a recently buried outlaw's grave had been disturbed, investigators searched Baptiste's home and found dozens of pairs of children's shoes, men's shoes, funeral shrouds, and infant clothing. Baptiste had desecrated an estimated 300 graves.
Rather than face mob violence, church leader Brigham Young arranged for Baptiste's exile. Authorities branded 'grave robber' on his forehead and transported him by boat to Fremont Island in the Great Salt Lake in early 1862. Herders later found evidence he had killed livestock and stripped boards from structures—apparently building a raft. What became of him after that is unknown. His fate remains one of Utah Territory's genuine unsolved disappearances.
The cemetery's notable burials include Orrin Porter Rockwell, the heavily documented lawman and bodyguard of Joseph Smith; Lester F. Wire, inventor of the traffic light; and Jane Manning James, the first female Black Mormon pioneer. The grounds also contain a mass burial section for executed criminals and a Chinese plat established in 1919.
Sources
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Baptiste_(grave_robber)
- https://historytogo.utah.gov/jean-baptiste/
- https://www.slc.gov/cemetery/history-of-the-salt-lake-city-cemetery/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_Lake_City_Cemetery
- https://growtheflowutah.org/2025/10/30/meet-the-ghost-who-haunts-great-salt-lake/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_burials_at_Salt_Lake_City_Cemetery
- https://www.ksl.com/article/51384945/7-of-utahs-most-hair-raising-ghost-stories
- https://saltlakemagazine.com/salt-lake-cemetery-emos-grave/
- https://highlandrambler.org/5666/feature/best-salt-lake-haunts/
ApparitionsUnexplained lightsEVP
The paranormal tradition attached to Salt Lake City Cemetery centers on Jean Baptiste, whose crimes and disappearance are thoroughly documented in 19th-century Utah records. Baptiste stripped over 300 graves of burial clothing between roughly 1859 and his discovery in 1862. After his exile to Fremont Island in the Great Salt Lake, he vanished. No confirmed account of his death exists.
ABC4 has reported on the cemetery's haunted reputation, noting that local tradition places Baptiste's ghost not in the cemetery itself—where his victims are buried—but along the Great Salt Lake shoreline near Fremont Island, where he was last seen alive. The ghost story fits the historical record more closely than most: a man with documented crimes, a known exile, and a genuinely unresolved fate.
Porter Rockwell's grave draws visitors with a different kind of dark history. Rockwell killed an estimated 14 to 100 people over the course of his frontier career as lawman and enforcer—the range of the estimate itself reflects how contested the historical record is. His grave in the cemetery is a documented, visitable site.
Grimm Ghost Tours includes the cemetery on its city bus route, treating it as the physical anchor for Salt Lake City's pioneer-era dark history. The tour covers Baptiste, Rockwell, and other figures buried in the grounds whose documented histories require no embellishment.
Notable Entities
Jean BaptisteOrrin Porter Rockwell
