Thanks for posting this, Carroll - did you type it? You can go to the Herald site and copy and paste from there. I wouldn't see these articles if you didn't post them as I don't have access to the Herald in Centralia. There are several facts about this cemetery that have not been publicized. I'm sure these facts will be brought out in court. This is the most unfair situation any city administration has been involved in this state in years, and with all the bad publicity Snohomish County gets on a regular basis you'd think they would be sensitive to this and bend over backward to make amends. Obviously they are not doing that, they are insistent on building over this old cemetery. When the house for the Senior Center was moved onto the cemetery and a permit was requested, the city engineer informed those people (and they know who they are) that what they were doing was illegal because that property was divided for cemetery plots and contained burials, and those people proceeded without a permit inside the city limits of Snohomish. Then they added an addition and parking lot to that site, all illegally without city permits and inspections. Who are these people who can proceed to break the law and complain and literally campaign in their favor? State RCW's say a stiff fine and jail time for building over a known cemetery! Also, the Pioneer Village was built in the 1960's over another part of that cemetery that still had graves. It is well documented that the state removed 110 gravesites and the construction crew said when they finished there were graves remaining on both sides of Hwy 2 or 2nd Street in Snohomish. They literally moved tombstones from graves across the road to set up their exhibition cemetery in the 1960's - did they think the highway crew removed the graves from under the tombstones and left the stones???? Then these Snohomish Pioneer Girls and Boys who were all mature adults said they didn't think there were any graves left there. They wrote a book less than 10 years later saying there were graves there, quoted the construction crew who said they were there, and were able to look out at a bunch of tombstones at that time. Those people seem to hear and see only what they want to hear and see! Bill McDonald, Snohomish City Manager said, "We feel it would be better to get anything we find moved to a > cemetery," McDonald said, "because we are not operating a cemetery there. It's the most respectful thing we could do." Excuse me, Bill, but you don't own the city, you are only there for a few years, the cemetery has been there for 120 years. What does he mean they are not operating a cemetery there? How do you "operate" a historic cemetery? As for Leslie's comments about records and the blackberry patch, she has been told repeatedly by several different people records have been found, she has ignored that fact in every article she's written. We can only hope the judge won't ignore that fact. It should be an interesting court case. BTW - Glen Grace and I are the only ones from our little committee left on the Cemetery mail list and the stories we've heard in recent weeks would curl your hair. In New Jersey they rededicated an old cemetery that had been abused in about 1954. In 1955 the city began using it as a dumping ground and it is now buried under several feet of city garbage. Not as a sanitary fill, mind you, a place where the city threw their garbage to avoid using the sanitary service! A strip mall in Indiana began encroaching on a neighboring historic cemetery until there are only a few stones left standing and they have been encroached by the local telephone company who sunk a pole and put lines there to the mall. A telephone booth sits beside a tombstone dated 1850's. The rest of that family is under the parking lot. There are so many cases of private cemeteries surrounded by farm land where the farmer won't allow access - he will shoot you if you trespass on his property. One cemetery was dismantled by a neighbor because his wife was tired of looking out her kitchen window onto a grave yard - a fence seems not to have been considered. Our little committee which began on this list last December has tried to get some results for Snohomish and we have been turned away and ignored by every government agency in this state. It is just too bad we couldn't get the same help Andi is getting in Kitsap County where County officials are helping to clean up and reclaim their cemeteries. It only takes a few caring people in the right places. What has happened to Snohomish County? Makes you wonder! Norma