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Elko Switch Cemetery, 20-1 Summary Report, page 11
on the "Elko Switch Cemetery" left, too. The Army Ordnance Corps officials who eventually took over Huntsville Arsenal may also have never known about the relocated graves. Certainly by 1965, when the graves were rediscovered by an earlier road construction project, authorities were once again aware of their existence.
"Old cemetery excavated; reinterment on arsenal," The Redstone Rocket, 3 Feb 88, p. 1.
Remains of 59 burials found in an unmarked and unrecorded cemetery in the I-565 right of way near Gate 9 will be reinterred on Redstone Arsenal following a historical examination.
The two-acre cemetery is located partly on Redstone Arsenal and partly on a right of way ceded by the Army to the state of Alabama.
An archaeological team from the University of Alabama located and opened the graves for the Highway Department and has taken the contents to Tuscaloosa for further study.
They believe tentatively that the cemetery was active in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, on the basis of coffin hardware, viewing windows, nails and other evidence. A couple of coins dated 1916 were found in one grave. Coffins were wooden and had disintegrated except for a few that were partially intact.
The cemetery is on land purchased by the Army in 1941 but does not appear on property records. It was discovered in 1965 during construction of the interchange at Rideout Road and Highway 20.
The part of the cemetery that is within Redstone Arsenal contains about 150 graves, a determination made by scraping away the topsoil layer. The 59 graves removed from the right of way will be relocated onto the arsenal with the others after researchers are through trying to determine who was buried there and when.
Excerpts from: Shogren, Michael G., et.al., Elko Switch Cemetery: An Archaeological Perspective. Performed for the State of Alabama, Alabama Highway Department, Montgomery, Alabama, Project I-565, Huntsville, Madison County, Alabama. The University of Alabama, Alabama State Museum of Natural History, Division of Archaeology, Report of Investigations 58, April 1989.
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