Who is buried in the Salt Lake City cemetery? Church presidents, pioneers, and other interesting Utah figures

SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4) — As many are anticipating that President Russell M. Nelson will be buried in the Salt Lake City Cemetery, ABC4 decided to take a look at some of the notable figures buried in this historic cemetery.

The Salt Lake City Cemetery is the largest city-owned cemetery in the country, at a size of 120 acres. The first burial took place in 1848, before the incorporation of Salt Lake City in 1851, and there are 130,000 burial sites in the cemetery.

According to the Salt Lake City website, the cemetery was developed during the rural cemetery movement, which used landscaping in a park-like setting for cemeteries and created America’s first public parks.

The first person buried in the cemetery was Mary Wallace in 1848, the young daughter of George Wallace, a recently arrived pioneer. Wallace offered his land to the city to become the cemetery, and he became the first sexton of the Salt Lake City cemetery, overseeing cemetery operations.

Presidents of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

All but four Presidents of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, prior to President Russell M. Nelson, are buried in the Salt Lake City cemetery. The last three presidents of the church, Thomas S. Monson, Gordon B. Hinckley, and Howard W. Hunter, all rest in the Salt Lake City cemetery.

The monument to Monson was made with leftover granite used for the Conference Center. Hinckley’s monument is often covered with coins from visitors, and Hunter’s headstone is adorned with roses.

Many people are expecting President Russel M. Nelson to also be laid to rest in the Salt Lake City cemetery, but the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has not yet confirmed where he will be buried.

Out of the presidents buried elsewhere, Joseph Smith was buried in Nauvoo, Illinois. Brigham Young was buried in a family cemetery on his property in Salt Lake City. Lorenzo Snow, the fifth president of the church, was buried in Brigham City, and Ezra Taft Benson, the thirteenth president of the church, was buried in Whitney, Idaho.

If you would like to visit the gravesites of any of the church presidents buried in the Salt Lake City Cemetery, you can find a map of the monument locations here.

Pioneers and other church figures

Many of the original Mormon pioneers and other notable figures in the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are buried in the Salt Lake City Cemetery. The cemetery has a list of these figures and a map showing you where to find their graves available here.

Orrin Porter Rockwell was a bodyguard to Mormon prophets, and he was a close friend of Joseph Smith. In 1842, there was an assassination attempt made against former Missouri governor Lilburn Boggs, and Rockwell spent nearly a year in jail for the crime without ever being convicted. Joseph Smith also prophesized that Rockwell would be protected from harm as long as he did not cut his hair.

Amelia Folsom Young was one of Brigham Young’s plural wives, his 25th wife, and she was reportedly his favorite wife. She met Brigham Young as she arrived in Salt Lake City, because he had a habit of meeting with arriving pioneers. She died in 1910, 37 years after Brigham died.

Jane Manning James was the first female Black Mormon pioneer, and you can find her grave on the southern side of the cemetery, between Central Avenue and Center Street. She was born a free Black woman in Connecticut, and she was baptized as a Latter-day Saint in 1841. She lived with Joseph and Emma Smith, and she arrived in Salt Lake City in 1847.

The architect of the Salt Lake City Temple, Truman O. Angell, is buried in the cemetery. He was the Church Architect for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which is no longer an official position within the church. He died in 1887, before the dedication of the Salt Lake Temple in 1893.

Here are a few other notable Church figures buried in the Salt Lake City Cemetery:

• Jedediah Morgan Grant was the first mayor of Salt Lake City. He died at the age of 40 in 1856.
• Orson Pratt was the last living member of the original 1835 Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. He died in 1881 at the age of 70.
• Neal Maxwell presided over the organization of the first Church stake staffed entirely by Black African church members in Aba, Nigeria in 1988. He died in 2004.
• L. Tom Perry was a World War II veteran and a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles who died in 2015.

Interesting Utah figures and notable graves

Many other people are buried in the Salt Lake City Cemetery, from wannabe outlaws to inventors to Utah politicians. Here’s a selection of some of the interesting Utah figures and notable graves located in the cemetery.

Brigham Morris Young was the son of Brigham Young, and he was one of the founders of the Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Movement, which is the predecessor to today’s Young Men program of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He was also a crossdressing soprano and went by the name Madame Pattirini, performing in Utah venues from 1885 to the 1900s.

Romania Pratt Penrose was the first female doctor in Utah. She studied medicine in New York City, Philadelphia, and Boston, and she taught courses on anatomy, physiology, and obstetrics in Salt Lake City starting in 1878. She retired from medical practice in 1912 and died in 1932 at the age of 93.

Lester Farnsworth Wire was the inventor of the traffic light and the “savior of the highways,” according to his sister Esther. In 1912, he was tasked with forming some kind of traffic department for Salt Lake City, with increasing traffic from streetcars and automobiles in addition to horses and buggies. Police constables were assigned to direct traffic, but Wire came up with a better solution: the traffic light. He died in 1958.

Hiram Bebee was a criminal, and author Dr. Steve Lacy claimed he was the Sundance Kid. His grave is marked with a small black headstone, where he was buried after serving a life sentence for killing Sanpete County Marshal Jon T. Larsen in 1945. He had been to South America, where Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid moved. If he were the Sundance Kid, he never told anyone while in prison.

Lily E. Gray was a woman who died in 1958, and she has a rather mysterious gravestone that is inscribed “Victim of the Beast 666.” According to the Utah State Archives, not much is known about her early life, but at the age of 72, she married Elmer Gray, a man with quite a criminal history. She died of natural causes in 1958, and no one knows why her grave was given the inscription.

Here are a few more interesting Utah figures buried in the cemetery.

• Joseph Morris was the leader of the Morrisite religious movement and skirmish, and he is buried in an unmarked grave. He died in 1862, and his age was unknown.
• Gunplay Maxwell was a gunfighter and small-time bandit who wanted to join Butch Cassidy’s gang. He died in 1909.
• Martha Hughes Cannon was the first woman state senator in U.S. history. She died in 1932 at the age of 75.
• Larry H. Miller was a businessman and the owner of the NBA team, the Utah Jazz. He died in 2009 at the age of 65.
• Calvin L. Rampton was Utah’s longest-serving governor, holding office from 1965 to 1977. He was a moderate democrat, and he won his elections with overwhelming majorities. He died in 2007 at the age of 94.
• Olene S. Walker was Utah’s first and only female governor. She served as the 15th governor of Utah from 2003 to 2005, following Mike Leavitt’s resignation. She died in 2015 at 85 years old.

There are many other interesting people from Utah’s history buried in the cemetery that we did not have the space to include here, so for a full list and a map of where their graves are located, visit the Salt Lake City website here.