History of Sunnyside Cemetery

In 1904, a Long Beach newspaper announced, "The Long Beach Cemetery Association has secured an eight-acre tract west of American Avenue and just north of the Willows. It is broken enough to make easy work for a landscape gardener to make it a beauty spot." The 80-acre tract was never used for a cemetery, but a 15-acre plot adjacent to the Signal Hill Cemetery was used for Sunnyside Cemetery.

Sunnyside offered a park-like setting and promised perpetual care through endowment assessments. Many prominent Long Beach families are buried there: Walker, Stearns, Harnett, Buffum, Woodruff and dozens of others.

Cemetery to right. Hundreds of oil derricks line Willow Street

Sunnyside has a specific area for Civil War veterans. Civil War Medal of Honor recipient, Nelson W. Ward, is also buried there. Ward was given the Medal of Honor for his courageous attempt to help his Captain.

Several of the headstones are embedded with pictures of the deceased.

In 1915, the owners announced the sale of a lot in the northwest corner for the building of a mausoleum. The new owner had other plans and wanted to lease the lot to an oil company for drilling.

Angel of Sorrows atop grave site for Rhea and Covert families

By 1921, when oil was discovered int he world's largest oil deposit on Signal Hill, the cemetery became a battleground. At once, cemetery land became the most valuable property in the area as relatives fought for mineral rights and cemetery owners planned to sell off lots for drilling.

A cemetery protective association was formed to urge the City Council to prevent drilling in the cemetery. The City Council offered to purchase 100 to 200 acres away from Sunnyside so that the buried could be relocated.







A permit to drill in the cemetery was never issued, however, the oil company was able to slant drill (also called "whipstocking") from the Jergins lease north of Sunnyside Cemetery. Several families sued for oil rights. In 1937, the court ruled that the families had only an easement for burial and did not have rights to the minerals below.

The scene of oil derricks surrounding cemeteries brought Ansel Adams, famed photographer, to Long Beach in 1939 to capture what he called "the strange juxtaposition" of a cemetery surrounded by oil derricks.  His photograph of the Rhea grave site with the "Angel of Sorrows" sculpture atop was featured in Life Magazine and was acquired by the Huntington Museum.  April 2017 will mark the 110th Anniversary of placement of the Angel of Sorrows on the grave site.

After the battle for oil ended, public interest in Sunnyside Cemetery faded. Eventually, the cemetery fell inot neglect and mismanagement. It changed hands several times, finally winding up under oversight of the state cemetery board due to embezzlement of endowment funds and neglect of graves.

Today, the Sunnyside Cemetery Corporation and its Friends of Sunnyside, a nonprofit whose board members have family buried there, oversee operations for the 16,236 buried.

Since 1995, Sunnyside is the primary site (with Municipal Cemetery) for the annual Historical Cemetery Tour, sponsored by the Historical Society of Long Beach. Specific gravesites are selected and professional and volunteer actors in period costumes provide a narrative of the lives of those buried at the site. The tour is held on the Saturday before (or on) Halloween.


In 2000, the City of Long Beach designated Sunnyside a historic landmark.