A necklace of the white marble fragments of broken headstones are worn like talismans by the west side walkways of Buena Vista Park: evocative of a pioneer past, when this small mountain was known as Hill Park, and bodies were allowed to be buried on San Francisco soil.

But in 1900 Board Supervisors voted to prohibit burial within the city and county limits.  http://www.sanfranciscocemeteries.com.   Would zombies be set free by the rumbling belly of future earthquakes, heading straight for Stonestown Galleria?   Grave sites that once dotted the city were moved one by one to greener (and foggier) pastures, heading south to Colma (fog being the appropriate milieu for the living dead): their poetic fragments left behind.

With the Great Depression of the 1930’s came WPA workers turning fragments from the relocated Lone Mountain Cemetery of Laurel Village into rain gutters linings.  As Twenty-First century runners, we follow their trajectory up, up and up for a hill climb run of 525 feet rewarded by our Buena Vista View of the Golden Gate bridge with ample opportunities for stairs.  Established in 1865, Hill Park, like a virgin, was San Francisco’s first.