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Greenwood Cemetery is located 1 mile south of the Walluski River bridge (or ½ mile past Milepost 5 on Highway 202) coming from the city of Astoria.
This 30 acre cemetery lies on a gently rolling knoll overlooking Young's River and gives a panoramic view of the valley and surrounding hills, with views of the mouth of the Columbia River and the Pacific Ocean.
Incorporated in 1891, it is possible to see grave markers with dates that predate that such as 1868 and 1872 due to reburials. When the city of Astoria closed the Hillside Cemetery at the top of Astoria around 1900, a number of early Astoria pioneers were moved and reburied at Greenwood.
Until 1915 funeral processions, visitors and grave stones came to the cemetery by river steamer, rather than endure the rugged "puncheon" road build of split logs. Coffins had to be hauled up the hillside from the river using ropes. Pilings in the river are all that remain of the Greenwood dock. Newspapers used to carry announcements of when a steamer (or steamers) would be taking the funeral party to the cemetery.
Some early grave markers were wooden; those have been lost over the last century when, in order to clear the brush, vines and sapling overgrowth, it was set afire.
In 1955, the cemetery expanded to include the newer portion of the cemetery called Crestview.
While it is an historic ground, it remains an active cemetery today.
The above information obtained (for the most part) from the Greenwood cemetery website, which includes a wealth of information related to history, maps, locations, a blog, and available cemetery services.
As described on Greenwood cemetery website in very poetic language:
"Greenwood is a pioneer cemetery, an outdoor museum, a memento of great achievements and unheralded lives of ordinary people who contributed greatly to both culture and structure, leaving a better place for those who followed, some by their lives, others by their departures. Here lie explorers, people of commerce and industry, civic leaders, murderers, gamblers, loggers, fisherfolk, and a host of early settlers who lived lives of quiet desperation. Immigrants from Scandinavia, Finland and Ireland wrote to family members back in their land of birth, saying, "Come on over! It looks just like home!" Each grave has a story waiting to be told."
Greenwood Cemetery Website