The Avenues cemetery can be a source of history and enjoyment

The Avenues area is home to thousands of people, residing in downtown lofts, town homes and even sprawling mansions. But the area is also home to more than 100,000 people occupying just 252 acres with a commanding view of the valley.

While these people are, well, less active than the rest of the residents, they are still a fascinating part of the history and legend of the city. They can all be found in the Salt Lake City Cemetery, established in 1848.

"If all those buried in the cemetery were alive and had homes on those 252 acres," says Marc Ferguson, "it would be one of the largest cities in Utah by population."

For many people, like Ferguson, a cemetery is more than just a place where the dead are laid to rest.

A former elementary school teacher, Ferguson wrote Discovering: Salt Lake City Cemetery to help make Utah history more interesting for his students. But he is more than just a history buff. He wants adults as well as children to know that while cemeteries are places for respect and reverence, there is no need for fear them. They are vital historical locations alive with history, legend and folklore. So, dead men, and women, really do tell tales.

Take John "Jack" Slade for example. A rabble-rouser and a drunkard for a good part of his life, he was eventually hanged in Virginia City, Idaho. According to a Salt Lake Tribune article, Slade's bereaved widow was determined that her husband not be buried in the "damned territory" of Idaho. So, she took his body home, filled a tin coffin with whiskey and "shipped the remains to Salt Lake City with instructions for the coffin to be transferred to an eastbound stage for Illinois" whence they had come.

But due to a misunderstanding, Slade was taken to the Salt Lake City Cemetery and buried in 1864.

"And today his remains and the whiskey that proved his undoing," wrote reporter Harold Schindler in the article, "still await the stage for Carlisle."

Another symbol of the Old West, Hyrum Bebee, is also buried in the cemetery. Don't recognize the name? Well, many people believe him to be the infamous Sundance Kid, sidekick to Butch Cassidy. Men, however, aren't the only bad apples in the lot.

"One person mentioned in the 'Stranger's Plat,' " adds Ferguson, "is listed only as 'Bad Woman.' But it doesn't list why she was a bad woman or just how bad she was."

The cemetery is also filled with plenty of good folks including ecclesiastical and civic leaders, and other local celebrities. Philo T. Farnsworth, the "Father of Television," is buried there, as is former NASA Director James Fletcher, who came out of retirement to lead the organization after the Challenger disaster in 1986. Fletcher's stone portrays an image of a shuttle, reflective of his life's work.

One of the most interesting monuments in the cemetery does not identify a particular grave at all. It is an angel, wings outspread, with the gentle word "Hope" spelled out under one wing. Richard Paul Evans, author of The Christmas Box, shares the unique story of this heavenly monument. "The angel monument at the heart of [the book] actually did exist. I learned of the angel from an [elderly] neighbor who I often visited."

The neighbor, Leah Perry, told Evans that as a child, she would hear a terrible wailing coming from the cemetery. She followed the sound and found a woman kneeling at the base of a sandstone angel statue. After the woman left, Leah saw the words "Our little angel" etched in its base.

While the memory of the statue was real, the statue that Leah Perry saw was not. After a fan of Evans' book complained to him that she had been to the cemetery and could not find the statue mentioned, Evans called his former neighbor and went to investigate; the fan was right. The statue was no longer there. It is thought that perhaps it was one of the markers lost during tremendous flooding of 1945.

"As I thought about the grieving parents wandering the cemetery," remembers Evans, "I had a sudden wish to rebuild the angel, to provide a place for them to grieve their little ones." The Christmas Box Angel of Hope Statue was erected in 1994.

So whether visitors to the Salt Lake City Cemetery are looking for the weird, the unusual or the sentimental, there's plenty to go around.

"The cemetery is a friendly place," says Ferguson, who teaches others to look from a more human perspective. "It is such a neat learning environment and a hands-on museum. You leave there with a different feeling even if you never knew the people buried there. There's just a feeling that you get."