After 132 years, Riverside Cemetery has more life, stories ahead

ASHEVILLE - The sounds of Riverside Cemetery are as satisfying as its sightlines.

Like most marble towns, it is a soft symphony of acorns popping on pavement, flocks of birds chirping in mature trees, the hum of a lawnmower in the distance, the rhythmic breathing of a morning jogger, inhaling for three or four steps and then exhaling the same.

Riverside is hallowed ground in Asheville. It is the resting place of some of the city's most notable citizens — from writers to artists to politicians to presidential bodyguards — tucked away neatly down a narrow street in the Montford Historic District.

The allure stuck out to its director, Josh Darty.

More: Who's buried in Riverside Cemetery? See the list of notables

He started there in landscaping 12 years ago while his wife, Katie, was in school at UNC Asheville. Now he leads regular tours on the city-owned grounds, able to share stories and factoids about the cemetery's residents with precision.

"We have a walking tour with about 50 names on it and I could probably put 200 on there of people who have done things that really influenced Asheville," he said. "And it's not whether the person did great things; it's whether they did something noteworthy."

Even 132 years after it was incorporated by the Asheville Cemetery Co., Riverside remains active, servicing the upwards of 75 interments each year. It also is a regional tourism draw, hosting 30,000 visitors annually, many of whom come to read passages of "Look Homeward, Angel" and sip bourbon over Thomas Wolfe's grave.

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But city officials are mindful that Riverside won't be active forever.

It has fewer than 700 available gravesites, and many others purchased that have gone generations without inhabitants. Most, Darty said, are up for descendants to claim. The future of Riverside is headed toward tourism. Despite its spacious grounds, expansion there likely isn't possible as it is landlocked between neighborhoods and a stretch of Interstate 26 bordering the French Broad River.

Still, its future changes little about Riverside's place in the community, its rolling hills and its aging mausoleums draped in ivy telling a story of Asheville few can.

"In short, the Riverside Cemetery is one of the most beautiful places to experience the history of this area across the ages," Rob Neufeld, a local historian and regional history columnist for the Citizen-Times, said this week.

"I could probably spend a lifetime telling the stories that those gravestones indicate — not only because of the individuals involved but also because of how they are grouped."

The start

It was borne out of a growing need in the area, the names of its founders reading like a historic document of the city. Names like Vance and McLeod and Johnston and Rankin and Patton and Pearson were among the 17 men serving as original stockholders in the Asheville Cemetery Co.

Riverside was planned as a garden-style cemetery that would serve as a burial ground and public park, Citizen-Times and cemetery archives show. As a part of its opening, graves from the First Presbyterian Central Methodist and Trinity Episcopal churches burial yards were sent there, a move some saw as progressive while others saw it as "far-sighted."

It maintained low rates for grave space for much of its early life. Some spaces could be purchased for as little as $5.

However, the cemetery fell into disrepair in the 1940s as the cemetery company ran out of money following the Great Depression and after many of its original stockholders died. It led residents to wonder what its future might be.

Asheville resident Joseph Selby wrote in a 1947 letter to the Citizen-Times concerning the condition of the cemetery, urging the city to consider purchasing it and converting it to a "public institution."

"Riverside Cemetery is a place of natural beauty and appropriateness for its present use," Selby said. "It could be made and should be made a place of solemn and sacred charm, a credit to the people of Asheville instead of a shame, as portions of it are today."

Hickory resident Max R. Steelman echoed those remarks in an early 1950s letter that the lot is "grown up in honeysuckle, briers, poison oak and weeds to the place where the grave markers are not visible."

City Council accepted an offer to purchase the cemetery in 1952 for $10. The decision largely was met with positive reviews, though the council saw opposition from the Allied Memorial Council of Buncombe County, Green Hills Cemetery in West Asheville and the Green Hills Cemetery Association.

One concern expressed was what it would mean for other cemeteries in the area.

"This will put no one out of business," the Rev. C. Grier Davis said at the time. "We will need every grave in Green Hills and every other cemetery in time to come." Davis added that arguments against the city intervening were "pointless," remarking that the cemetery "had been neglected for too long."

Other concerns, like those expressed by Councilman James P. Adams, were about personal responsibility in maintenance of the cemetery.

"If the City takes over, it does not lessen the responsibility of those who have loved ones there to help care for it."

The city went to work upgrading roadways, clearing brush and correcting the setting of more than 5,000 graves that had sunk several feet below ground level.

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Its purchase also meant that the cemetery no longer would be segregated based on race. Darty said it had accepted interments of all races from the beginning, which was both uncommon and controversial, but that whites and everyone else were buried in separate sections.

Some of it continued to be segregated based on longstanding traditions, though he noted that "anyone was allowed to be buried anywhere if they purchased the grave." Sections of the current Riverside map with a double letter rather than a single one traditionally are African-American sections of the cemetery.

Its modern Section AA, for example, formerly were identified as "Black A," and before that, "Colored A."

"I don't know what they called it before that," Darty said, "but I'd hate to think."

The last voyage, the longest, the best

Wolfe was buried at Riverside in 1938. He died of miliary tuberculosis, less than a month before his 38th birthday. His marker lists him as a "beloved American author" with quotes from two of his books, including "The Web and the Rock," published posthumously in 1939.

He is buried next to his parents, W.O. Wolfe and Julia Wolfe, and several siblings.

His gravesite is fairly plain if not for the stone cemetery vase in front of it filled with pens, pencils and a blank pad of sticky notes. Darty said this has become a recent tradition.

"A lot of times, authors will come and leave a note to Wolfe," Darty said. "I've seen a lot of prayers to relieve writer's block."

He added that it isn't uncommon for visitors to hold dramatic readings of Wolfe's literary works there, the foot traffic leading the cemetery to replace the grass bordering the family's plot every few years.

"When visitors gaze upon Wolfe's stone in the future, I hope that the place inspires them to turn to Wolfe's writing to appreciate his language as well as his portrayals of place, history, and human strengths and foibles," Rebecca Godwin, president of the Thomas Wolfe Society, said in an email this week.

"We find something new in Wolfe each time we read his books."

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Wolfe isn't the only notable name in the cemetery, though.

There's the grave of William Sydney Porter, better known as the short-story writer O. Henry. There's Captain James H. Posey, a one-time bodyguard of President Abraham Lincoln. There's Japanese photographer George Masa, a contributor in establishing the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

It is home to North Carolina governors Locke Craig and Zebulon Vance, Congressmen James Britt, John Brown, George Shufurd, Richmond Pearson, Thomas Johnston and James Gudger Jr. and Senators Jeter Pritchard, Robert Reynolds and Thomas Clingman.

Its oldest grave belongs to Barbara Patton, grandmother of early city notable T.W. Patton, who died in 1807. Her grave was moved there from another local cemetery.

Charlie Hill, 25, was the first person buried in the incorporated cemetery on Dec. 12, 1885.

And then there are the names few know: the shop owners, the welders, the soldiers, the couples married 50 years, the infant children, all of which are maintained by the Asheville Parks and Recreation Department and visited only by surviving family members.

History notwithstanding, some local tour groups draw upon Riverside's mystique while telling fictional tales of fictional residents there.

That's part of the business for David Voyles, co-owner of Dark Ride Tours. The company hosts its "Haunted Graveyard Tour" regularly through Riverside, promising that host Virgil Nightshade will spin "original tales of terror inspired by the creepy crypts and terrifying tombstones."

Voyles said stories told in the cemetery were inspired by walking around its grounds. His customers tend to want ghost stories, which the company provides along with some nuts and bolts history of the property.

"Instead of a historical tour, it's a ghost-storytelling tour," he said. "It's the stories inspired by the tombstones and the graves in Riverside Cemetery. They are not historically accurate tales."

'It will continue on how it is'

One-time cemetery manager Charles R. (Chick) Hunter estimated in 1967 that Riverside had enough unused lots to last another 50 years — which would have been enough until this year. At that time, the cemetery had a rate of 250 burials a year.

However, Darty said current rates might keep it viable for another century at least.

There are almost 14,000 people interred at Riverside, roughly one person for every six currently living in Asheville. It has room for about 25,000 plots, but many of its remaining spaces already have been purchased.

Darty said the cemetery has 100 spaces for sale now and between 500-700 remaining — though reconfiguration projects identify several new spots each year.

They sell for $1,300 for Asheville residents and $1,625 for everyone else.

It is comparable to the price of most other cemeteries in Buncombe County, which offer some spots as low as $800 but generally average in the range of $1,400 per space.

What has extended the life of Riverside and other cemeteries has been the increased prevalence of cremation services. In 2015, the rate of cremations to deaths in the United States was 48.6 percent, up from 32.4 percent just a decade before, according to Cremation Association of North America.

For Riverside, it means the cemetery can stretch its landlocked area a little further, meaning it still attempts to serve families there however it can.

"I try to tell my guys, when someone comes in here, it’s a normal day for you, but it’s one of the worst days of their lives," Darty said. "Try and treat them like you would want to be treated in that situation."

Darty said the city's intention upon purchasing Riverside 65 years ago was eventually to convert it to more of a memorial area when it runs out of space. And even if that day comes 20 years or a century from now, he said it will never change its focus.

"Even whenever the last grave has sold and the last burial has occurred, this will remain a cemetery," he said. "It will be a place for people to visit and it's probably likely to remain a strong tourist attraction.

"It will continue on how it is, but it just won't have that (burial) aspect to it anymore."