The Birmingham Zoo prepares to build a brand-new environment called Cougar Crossing in the zoo’s Alabama Wilds area. But a recent archeological study discovered a minimum of 12 tombs under the suggested website. Now the zoo has actually declared an authorization with the Alabama Historical Commission to expertly exhume the tombs and reinter them close by.
“We see it as an opportunity to tell the story of Birmingham. It’s got a great story,” said Chris Pfefferkorn, the zoo’s CEO and President. “I think it gives us a great opportunity as folks visit their zoo to learn even more about their zoo, Birmingham and where they live.”
The zoo has actually been open considering that the 1950s, however prior to that, it was a park and earlier a cemetery. It’s altered names almost a half lots times from Southside Cemetery and New Southside Cemetery to Red Mountain Park and Red Mountain Cemetery to Lane Park.
Records reveal that in the 1880s, the city of Birmingham purchased 120 acres where the zoo now sits to utilize as an overflow for the city’s very first cemetery, Oak Hill. The objective was to utilize it mostly as a Potter’s Field for individuals who couldn’t pay for to be buried.
Over a 20-year duration, more than 4,700 individuals were buried there. But locating these tombs can be difficult.
“There has been no map that we can find. We have a list of names, but it doesn’t correlate to any position within this area,” said Pfefferkorn.
It’s a problem Gary Gerlach, the previous director of the close-by Birmingham Botanical Gardens, encountered as he invested years looking into the history of the location.
“There’s no identification so you don’t know (where someone is buried) until you put a shovel in the ground,” said Gerlach.
Gerlach said that if the license is authorized, the zoo might stumble upon more than 12 tombs already found under the proposed advancement.
Terri Hicks, the Jefferson County agent for the Alabama Cemetery Preservation Alliance, said that’s why it’s important that the organization is associated with the exhuming procedure.
“If we can get just to have our boots on the ground (and) just to be there to answer questions … I’d like to be there,” said Hicks.
The ACPA works together with locals and the Alabama Historical Commission to discover, protect and keep countless cemeteries throughout the state.
The historic commission will decide on the moving license. A commission spokesperson said it hasn’t received any moving license applications in the previous 5 years.
It’s a minimum of a two-month-long procedure. Each application is examined by several employee and they need to consist of legal files, previous examinations within the cemetery and proposed approach for the elimination and reinterment of human remains.
If the strategy is authorized by the commission and the tombs are exhumed, archeologists may discover remains or burial items. But Pfefferkorn wasn’t depending on it.
“Our expectation of finding things is very low because, one, they weren’t kept in a vault or container that would protect the body longer and, two, with the (acidic) soil composition, we may not find much. But it’s up to the archeologist,” Pfeffercorn said.
In any case, the zoo has a strategy. Pfeffercorn said they’ll treat any stays with regard by putting them into pine boxes, celebrating them by means of a placard, holding an event and building a database with their GPS collaborates.
Leaving some sort of marker is precisely what the zoo needs to do, said Hicks.
“Because if you don’t people are going to forget. And every marker is a person just like us. You have to respect those markers and respect the people that those markers represent because they had lives just like we did,” she said.
