UNKNOWN

Monterey County Magazine article

When asked how I found the tiny Whitcher cemetery out at East Garrison, I answer honestly that I don't remember, and instead end up telling the person about my j-o-b. I'm an editor. Typically their response is, "That sounds interesting." The truth is that it's definitely not, and that's probably how I stumbled across the small, well-hidden graveyard of an unknown pioneer family named Whitcher. At least three of Thomas and Phoebe's children have taken up permanent residence at East Garrison, and two are still questionable: little Harry Whitcher who "Quit acheing" August 5, 1875 - September 16, 1875; sweet Floria Elvira Whitcher, "Returned to God, who gave her" July 19, 1866 - February 17, 1875; and poor Ned Eliger Whitcher, who "Ceased Breathing" November 8, 1862 - April 29, 1879, after a buckboard accident when he was just 17 years old. There's also a puny, broken-off headstone with just the initials "H.W." Plus, you have to count the grave marker of Mary H. Pearson 1899 - 1935, even though I have good reason to believe she's not there.

I'd taken to going out for drives during my lunch hour, or whenever the silence became too much at the Big-G factory, and I simply had to hear a song, any song, only played very loud down the dirt roads and overgrown trails of long-departed soldiers. I'd imagine what used to be there-cavalry troops and pioneer farmers tirelessly homesteading the land-instead of what was-vandalized Army barracks.

When my mother came apartment hunting with me on that first sojourn across Fort Ord in 1996, she called it a ghost town, and it was. Full of abandoned, boarded-up buildings that had deteriorated soon after being emptied two years before. Over ten years later, my fascination with Fort Ord hasn't changed all that much. Whatever the case, whenever I did come upon the Whitcher cemetery, and ever since then, I've been hooked on the question: why are children buried on Army land?

Now the land is privately owned and will be a whole new town-East Garrison-that'll include an arts district, community park, town center, library, fire station, and refurbishment of historic buildings dating back to the 1940s. The Whitcher cemetery will be sandwiched in by a hundred feet and two roads, plus some 1,400 homes. If you're lucky, one day in the future you'll be able to see the huge white cross as you drive re-opened Watkin's Gate Road on the way to Laguna Seca, or the other direction into the heart of East Garrison-soon to be the last historic remnant of Fort Ord.

I've discovered just a skeleton of Thomas and Phoebe Whitcher's story. Their original farm house still partially stands underneath magnificent Castle Rock in Corral de Tierra (better known as Markham Ranch). This barn-like structure was part of many things after the Whitchers left it in 1885, beginning in 1914 with a Cecil B. DeMille movie called The Rose of the Rancho. Paramount later remade the film in 1936. I have a picture from the first movie, and it shows that even then the farmhouse was in poor condition.

John Steinbeck also took an interest in the Whitcher homestead in his books Pastures of Heaven and The Long Valley. One story in the latter book is called The Murder, and it features the Whitcher's old house. It can be seen pretty much as is in Windy Hill Publications, Steinbeck Country-Exploring the Settings for the Stories. Coastal Grower Magazine also usually has something about the Whitcher's sketchy past in its monthly publication.

Of the thousands of acres the Whitcher family once owned, including Markham Ranch and Castle Rock, 1500 acres of beachfront property along Monterey, Sand City, and Seaside, and even 160 acres of Carmel Valley, at least the obscure Whitcher Cemetery will be preserved on the bluff overlooking the Salinas Valley. Once East Garrison is complete, descendents and interested people can drive or stroll to it and stay for the magnificent sunrise or sunset.

At the end of December 2005, before development of East Garrison began, one of the Whitcher's great-great granddaughters, a fellow researcher and appreciator of history, and I, did just that-we placed a Christmas wreath on the recently painted cross marking the cemetery and had eggnog. It was the highlight of the holidays for me, sitting on a candle-lit 132-year-old tombstone, and toasting to the legacy of the Whitcher family, so that it would live on in the hearts, minds, and imaginations of all who I call the keepers of the memories. May we not forget the trailblazers who walked before us, from whence we came.

G.M. Weger, July 2008