Construction crews working on UC Davis Health's Sacramento campus have uncovered 77 previously unknown burials, a discovery tied to a long-shuttered county hospital cemetery that once occupied the same ground. The remains, which include relatively complete skeletons as well as bone fragments, turned up during excavation along X Street near Stockton Boulevard, and officials say none of the burial sites had grave markers or other identifying materials.
UC Davis Health made the discovery known as work progressed at its Sacramento campus, according to CBS News. Historical and archaeological research indicates the excavation site overlaps with the footprint of the former Sacramento County Hospital cemetery, the outlet reports, and the health system says the remains do not have Native American origin.
A Burial Ground With a Century-Old History
The land has deep roots in Sacramento's public health history. The Sacramento County Hospital first opened for indigent patients at Stockton Boulevard and X Street in 1871, and the county authorized burials for indigent patients on the hospital grounds two decades later, in 1891, according to UC Davis Health's own historical timeline. The first burial on the grounds took place in 1897, and the last came in 1927, per the same account.
That history has resurfaced before. Nearby construction previously uncovered the remains of 72 people believed to have been buried in the same former hospital cemetery. UC Davis Health's timeline states those remains were reinterred at the Sacramento County Cemetery on Fruitridge Road in 2004, while CBS News, reporting separately, says a 2005 expansion of the UC Davis Cancer Center required moving 72 indigent graves to St. Mary's Cemetery. The two accounts differ on both the year and the destination cemetery, and it is not clear from available records whether they describe the same reinterment or two separate ones. A court approved the reinterment of those 72 people's remains.
Handling the New Discovery
UC Davis Health says the newly found remains are being stored at a secure facility while the health system works with public agencies and the Sacramento County Cemetery Advisory Commission. The health system described the process as standard legal and archaeological procedure, per its statement to CBS News.
Anyone with information or questions has been asked to contact UC Davis Health Government and Community Relations, with a response window running through November 3.
A Pattern of Discoveries on Hospital Grounds
This is not the first time digging near the old hospital site has turned up more remains than expected. A monitored excavation tied to earlier cancer center construction uncovered 28 possible additional burial sites. Researchers had determined that the initial bones discovered March 10 dated to the era of the Sacramento County Hospital Cemetery rather than to Native American burials, according to UC Davis.
The county itself no longer maintains a cemetery for interment of indigent remains, according to ABC10. The outlet reports that the remains of 72 people exhumed from the Sacramento County Hospital Cemetery now rest at St. Mary's Cemetery, marked by a single stone at the memorial site — a modest marker for a burial ground whose full extent is still being pieced together more than a century after the last interment.
