The Salt Lake City cemetery went into business only a year after Mormon pioneers entered the valley. Mary M. Wallace was buried there on Sept. 27, 1848, and since then approximately 114,000 more people have found their resting place there.
But burial plots take up space (they are 3 feet 4 inches wide and 7 feet 6 inches long), and slowly but surely the cemetery's 250 acres at 200 N. N St. have been filling up until now there are only 2,100 unsold plots left. With an average of 350 plots being sold per year, that leaves only about six years until Salt Lake City's dearly departed will have to look elsewhere for placement of their earthly remains."The cemetery has a boundary, and we've been in operation for well over 100 years," said city public services director Rick Graham. "It's going to happen."
There are a few ways to prolong the inevitable, such as a legal procedure for reclaiming sold plots that have never been used. About 38,000 plots have been sold but have not yet been used, and Graham said many of those were bought decades ago and have lain fallow since, meaning either that the intended occupant has incredible longevity or decided to go elsewhere.
According to state law, if a municipal cemetery plot isn't used within 60 years, the city can go through a rather involved procedure involving notice and the like, reclaim it, and sell it to someone else.
(The current budget process in Salt Lake City may complicate things: The City Council is likely todeny the administration's request for a new employee whose job would be to reclaim burial plots.)
Even so, it's only a matter of time before the cemetery fills up, and the city has no plans to expand it. That means you'll have to look to private cemeteries for your eternal dwelling, of which there are several in the city including two run by Larkin Mortuary, private Catholic and Jewish cemeteries next to the city's, Wasatch Lawn Memorial Park and Mount Olivet.
"I don't think there's a shortage of plots," Graham said.
Currently a city plot costs $500 (resident or non-resident), which includes perpetual maintenance. The city is likely to increase that to $600 this year. Private cemetery plots cost $900-$1,100 on average, though they can go up to $2,000.
Another option is above-ground burial in a mausoleum. Salt Lake Memorial Mausoleum charges an average of $2,000 for an individual crypt -- that's more expensive than a burial plot, but Salt Lake Memorial's Ron Temu points out that crypts require neither burial vaults nor headstones, which cost several hundred dollars at least. He also notes that it saves space -- more than six crypts on the footprint of one burial plot -- a valid point considering the state of Salt Lake's municipal cemetery.
Even more space can be saved by cremating. Utahns generally don't prefer it -- fewer than a fifth of Utah residents choose cremation -- but the numbers of those who do are gradually growing.
In the case of Salt Lake Memorial Mausoleum, which runs a crematorium, the body is placed in an easily burnable wooden casket or, if there is no viewing, an "alternate container" made out of cardboard, and placed in the concrete-lined crematorium, which burns the container and body using natural gas at a temperature reaching a whopping 1,800 degrees. The process takes two to three hours, depending on the size of the body.
Loved ones can purchase a "niche" in a mausoleum to place the ashes, or cremains, if desired.