New interest in Purissima Cemetery

“Natural burial allows your body to entwine with all the beauty Mother Nature has to offer,” promises an ad for Bixby’s company which he has operated for 14 years.

Hoping to restore the Purissima site to its “former glory,” Bixby says cleaning up the area will take a few years. So far, his company has not conducted burials at Purissima, where a wooden sign at the entrance proclaims “Purissima Cemetery Natural Burial Cemetery.”

“Purissima is being designed for the living and we have installed walking trails for the community’s enjoyment,” Bixby told the Daily Journal. “Purissima Cemetery is really the perfect place to embrace the beauty of the coastside as well as enjoy the historical value of the long forgotten town.”

According to historian Mitch Postel, the cemetery is all that’s left of a town that in the 1860s had a saloon, hotel, schoolhouse, store, livery stable and post office. The town, he writes in “San Mateo County, a Sesquicentennial History,” was founded by immigrants who thought Purissima would become the coast’s leading community. However, Half Moon Bay’s “better location on the road to San Mateo gave it the advantage and Purissima slowly disappeared.”

John Edmonds, past president of the Archives Committee of the Redwood City Public Library, made a study of the cemetery in 2009. His findings appeared in the Journal of Local History.

“It was my intention to include as many of the 48 people buried in Purissima Cemetery as possible,” he said.

Edmonds concluded that most of the burials were those of children “and there is little history of them.” Edmonds reported that he was surprised to find that a number of people who did business in Purissima actually lived in Redwood City, and many of them are buried in that city’s Union Cemetery.

The area’s upkeep has improved since Edmond visited the site.

“Purissima Cemetery is very hard to find, but it is worth the effort to visit the pioneer cemetery that has been left to its own survival,” he wrote in the 2009 article. “The weeds have taken over and there is little to see at first except poison oak. Then there are the rattlesnakes that lurk in various invisible holes only to come out when the sun welcomes them, which is somewhat rare in the foggy conditions that usually envelop the cemetery.”

Edmonds’ account includes a horrific tale that reads like Poe’s short story, “The Premature Burial.”

The first person buried was a little boy named Downing, his first name unknown. The child was not actually dead but was in a coma.

“Shortly after the burial a man in Purissima became ill and fell into a stupor and coma. The Downing boy’s father realized the possibility that his son might be in a coma, went straight to the grave, and dug down to his son who had turned over in the grave.”

The boy was the son of Major Jacob Downing. Downing and his wife Sarah soon left town.

The Rear View Mirror by history columnist Jim Clifford appears in the Daily Journal every other Monday. Objects in The Mirror are closer than they appear.