Effort to Remove Benton Ave. Cemetery - in 1882

Avaricious efforts to raze Helena's historic sites in the name of Progress didn't start with the Urban Renewal debacle of the 1970s, which gutted the city's ornate Victorian commercial center. Such efforts were a fact of life in Helena long before that shameful episode, even as far back as the late 19th Century.

One senses rapacious interests afoot in the following 1882 item from the Helena Independent, in which it is suggested that the "graveyard" (the Benton Avenue Cemetery, begun in 1870 and now listed in the National Register of Historic Places) be removed. The loathsome aspect of the story is the underlying suggestion that certain interests sought to uproot their own dead, in a financial gamble, under the guise of caring:

Removal of the Graveyard.
The rapid growth of Helena attracts the attention of all who return after a few months' absence. The wings of the city are spreading out east, west and north, and new buildings are dotting our suburbs in all directions. On the west side of the city, if the building boom continues, houses will soon thicken in the vicinity of the graveyard, and extend beyond it. Soon, too the railroad will be running close to that vicinity, and the rush and tumult of busy life will ring around the silent city of the dead. We naturally associate the grave with quiet. When life's labors are over it looks more in
harmony with nature's laws if the dead are removed as far possible from the busy world, its conflicts and its turmoil. Neither should our reverence and respect for the dead be lessened by being brought into every day contact with them. The most appropriate place for a graveyard is one of seclusion, beautified by the tender hands of love and shadowed by foliage, for when garish sunbeams laugh above a grave, it seems like a mockery of death.

The County Commissioners some time since contemplated the purchase of forty acres about two miles cast of the city for a burial ground. Such a site with sufficient water to irrigate it could be made exquisitely beautiful, and if such a measure is contemplated the sooner it is put into execution the better.
-- Helena Indpendent, Sunday, August 20, 1882

The key to the story is not its gauzy romantic prose about the revered dead resting peacefully under leafy bowers. Nor is it the strange notion that graves should be kept from the sunshine, lest the dead therein be somehow mocked. The key is instead stated bluntly in the line, "Soon, too the railroad will be running close to that vicinity, and the rush and tumult of busy life will ring around the silent city of the dead." In the summer of 1882, great anticipation was building in Helena over the coming arrival of Northern Pacific tracks, which would happen the following June.

The northern boundary of the cemetery abutted the right-of-ways of the Northern Pacific and the Montana Central Line of the Great Northern. Benton Avenue, the cemetery's eastern boundary, was part of the old Benton Road, the main freight route between Helena and Fort Benton, the head of steamship navigation on the Missouri River. Considering these factors, it's plain to see why real estate developers might see the "city of the dead" as an encumbrance. It's likewise easy to envision a Helena Independent writer being bought off to knock out a poetic set-up piece for the business elites. Perhaps the old saying is true: The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Fortunately, better heads prevailed; the historic cemetery stayed, and can be visited today. A few internments are listed at www.findagrave.com. The Benton Avenue Cemetery Association maintains the cemetery and has a
mission to preserve and enhance the historical integrity of the cemetery. For more information, contact the Benton Avenue Cemetery Association, P.O.Box 4212, Helena, MT 59604, 406-443-3242.