Riverside has some 26,000 to 27,000 graves, said Louis Schwartz, general manager of Riverside Memorial and four other cemeteries. Gravelly is maintained by the city. Other burial grounds are not so fortunate, said Waters. He points to the Yukon Cemetery, which maybe dates to the pre-Civil War Mulberry Grove plantation, now occupied by NAS Jacksonville. The site is overgrown, graves have been vandalized and markers removed.
Plans call for an apartment complex to be built alongside the cemetery.
It is unclear how far the burial ground of the 1800s extends beyond the 1910 boundaries of the cemetery. Ferguson the genealogist says Works Progress Administration interviews from the 1930s indicate there were not one but two cemeteries located there, one for blacks, one for whites. Some of the neighbors would like the plans for the apartment complex to go away, the burial area cleaned up and a memorial stone placed there. A similar situation exists at the Borden Cemetery north of Wilson Boulevard, a black cemetery. It is unfenced, unlighted and frequently vandalized.