This year’s project is a repeat of last year’s ‘Rake the Autumn Leaves’ event. Volunteers rake leaves, trim bushes and trees, pick up debris, and do other yard work for a two-hour session at the Old Leavenworth Cemetery on North Road, located north of the Leavenworth Amtrak station. Work starts at 10 am.
This cemetery clean-up event is a follow-on event to our spring ‘Rake the Spring Twigs’ event in April 2022 and last year’s ‘Rake the Autumn Leaves’ Event.
A local church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Leavenworth Ward, is participating and plans to provide food and music. The entire community is invited.
Please bring your favorite gardening tool: rakes, diggers, garbage bags, even chainsaws.
The North Road cemetery is a rare kind of cemetery. It was an association of family members in the early 1900s and was subsequently abandoned. There is no source of funding for maintenance, repairs, and upkeep. The Greater Leavenworth Museum has no legal connection to the cemetery and has informally adopted it as a project of historical importance to preserving the heritage of the Upper Valley.
To get to the cemetery, visitors wind down North Road until reaching the Icicle Amtrak station. Across the road is a dirt driveway that appears to lead to a private orchard. Follow the road past the apple trees, about an 1/8 mile uphill, and there rests the century-old cemetery overlooking the nearby railway and Tumwater Mountain. It’s known as the Old Leavenworth Cemetery, the North Road Cemetery and, to some locals, the Pioneer Cemetery.
Name: Sabrina Westbrook, (509) 679-8465
Email: [email protected]
https://www.wenatcheeworld.com/ncwfoothills/landmark-old-leavenworth-north-road-cemetery/article_d936467e-a160-11eb-bad4-73b09efb7a48.html
Photo by Luke Hollister