Corral
Creek Cemetery Origin
The
land for the Cemetery was donated by my great grandparents Hugh Franklin
and Mary Jane Senter McCarter who homesteaded on Corral Creek in 1886.
Here
is the account of how the Cemetery was started according to my grandpa,William
Senter McCarter born 1887 on Corral Creek.
Dad
bought a team of good big mares from a prospector that placer mined along
the Snake River in the wintertime and prospected in the hills in the summer.He
would come up to our place in the spring with team and wagon and leave
his wagon and pack his horses and go in the hills.But
one spring He never got away from the place.He
took down with the spotted fever and died and was the first person buried
in the Corral Cemetery.This was
before I can remember.This may
have been the Frank Downard who was buried there in 1888.Sometime
later H.F.(as we call him) donated the land to the county.
We
use to play in the Cemetery when I was a kid (We'd take our friends up
there to scare them).At that time,
there were many wooden crosses in varying degrees of decay.One
summer some civic group decided the Cemetery was in need of beautification.They
used a bulldozer to dig up the sagebrush and then burned it, and I suspect
more than a few of the old crosses were lost.I
do remember hearing stories that they'd go to bury someone in the Cemetery
and run into another grave while digging.So
I suspect there are many more people buried than one would think.I
don't know if the county kept any records on it or not.Strangely
enough none of our family was ever buried there,even though it sat on our
land for over 100 years.