Little Crossroad Cemetery

Driving down some random Alberta backroad, as we’re apt to do when there’s time to burn, we know there’s a good probability we’ll discover something interesting. Mostly we use they type of trips as scouting missions, making notes and then following up with a return visit at some later date. Here though, such formalities are not needed, and we take in a little forgotten cemetery at a crossroads in the “Special Areas”. Yes, it’s that vast expanse of sparsely populated land out east. Almost missing it on passing, we stop and take a few moments to pay our respects. Seems the proper thing to do.

Outside Lydia (1870s-1920s), the only currently marked grave, we know not who’s here. Fences speak of others interred, and depressions mark more, but in name they remain unknown. An online search of popular cemetery databases turns up nothing. Still, a plaque at the sites tells of the land here being used for burials from the early 1910s to the mid-1940s, whereas a church also stood here for most of that time. And that’s pretty much it.

Now all that’s left is a few falling down fences, Lydia’s stone marker, and little else. There among the tall grass and unkempt grounds, a place lost. We remember, if for but for a moment, if that means anything but doubt it’s much thought of or visited. Who were these people, what’s the story. I guess we’ll never really know. Then we’re gone in a cloud of dust, and it’s only ghosts in the silence and their faint memories of a life long past.

Another similarly forgotten…
Badland’s Cemetery – for all eternity.

Short Subjects: reports that for any number of reasons are brief in nature. They might be updates to older articles, previews of posts planned or not yet published, brief snippets of things that don’t fit in anywhere else or subjects that are so obscure that information on them can’t be found. Or sometimes we just ramble on about Lord knows what.

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Date of adventure: April, 2019.
Location: Special Areas #2, AB.

Forgotten on the Alberta Plains.