Grave Matters & Untimely Departures

Each October, director Dr. Alexandra Service (curator of the Fortuna Depot Museum) brings tales of intrigue and anguish to life with the help of some of the area’s finest actors and costumes provided by Kate Leona Newby.

2019’s ensemble included a would-be deadly dentist who tried to kill a colleague who’d insulted him, the daughter of the Star Hotel owners who died as a bride in 1907 and was buried in her wedding gown, a thirteen year old who married a Civil War veteran 16 years her senior and died two months after her husband’s death after 49 years of marriage, the daughter of a pioneer Humboldt family who died in a tragic car accident, America Jane Moore, who divorced three husbands in the 1870s and 80s and chased her third husband off the family property at gunpoint, a mother who died rescuing her daughter from a well shaft in 1912, a Fortuna High School student killed in a 1928 football accident, a Portland university student who took part in a double suicide in the redwoods in 1966, and Fortuna Police officer Ray Q. Mills, who died in the line of duty 52 years ago.

Grave Matters takes place at Fortuna Sunrise Cemetery on the Sunday on or before Halloween. Proceeds benefit the Fortuna Cemetery District.