Lonesome and forlorn; Pleasant Valley Cemetery is a lonely and sad memorial to some of our pioneer settlers.
It sits on a quiet knoll, and gets few visitors. Funding is so hard to find, even in good times, that cemeteries really suffer, but this one shows its' pain.
As fewer and fewer relatives and friends remain in the area, or are too aged to be able to visit, those poor souls are forgotten.
As we made our way through the overgrown jungle of vines and grasses, we found numerous headstones and graves have been totally covered.
Clearing away growth from some, we know it is but a brief respite, and but a short time in the open before our residents will again be covered until the winter kills the vegetation, and for a brief period, they are again more visible.
Many names that are so familiar when studying our famous pioneers are here.
Caroline Sexton (Sexton Mountain), is such a prominent figure among our pioneer settlers that we expected a shrine. We found instead, a small family plot of Sextons, where our pioneer heroine shares a stone memorial with her second husband, whose name Sexton Mountain bears. It was her mountain before she married David Sexton, and it was her pioneer spirit and strength that helped so much to settle this county. Now she is ignored, forgotten for the most part, and in an incredibly sad state of disregard.
Oregon is a very new part of the United States, she achieved statehood in 1859, and compared to other parts of our country is very young.
It saddens us when we see how those who came before us are already forgotten.
