Program

Hometown Heritage®

Subject

Cemetery, Site

Location

1002 Maxwell Rd, Almira, WA 99103, USA

Lat/Long

47.703724355866, -118.95799777855

Grant Recipient

Jonas Babcock Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution

Almira Cemetery, an active burial ground established in Almira, Washington, contains 1,252 interments with burials dating from 1886 to the present year. The first burial was the child of town founder Charles C. Davis. Charles C. Davis and his wife, Almira, arrived in Washington Territory in the 1880s and established a local homestead, where Charles initially operated a small store for early settlers. In 1889, the Northern Pacific Railway built a line through their property. Davis sold the right-of-way to the railroad, and that same year, the Davises and four other local residents contributed land to plat the town. Driven by the railroad, the town grew quickly, and Davis became a prominent local businessman until his death in 1899, after which he was interred in the cemetery. Following his death, Almira remarried and relocated west to Burlington, Washington, where she is interred.
The cemetery also contains the graves of workers from the Grand Coulee Dam project. Built between 1933 and 1947, construction of the hydroelectric dam resulted in at least 77 fatalities. Seven of these workers are buried in Almira Cemetery, including William Johnston, Andrew E. Speer, Gerald Flavial Coble, Daniel E. Meade, John Carl Engebritson, Francis Patrick Carrell, and Louis Sever Comeau, many of whom died in machinery or railway accidents on the job site.
Additionally, at least 83 veterans are buried in the cemetery. This military population includes veterans of the Civil War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War, as well as one veteran believed to have served in the Spanish-American War.