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officer with a paper map asking for information on our location. He briefly explained
our goals to search in the marsh for earthquake evidence, but what followed was a
very troubling comment by the officer. He informed us that digging up ‘old Indian
burial grounds was a federal offence, punishable by arrest and jail’. Imagine our
disbelief and nervousness when we were threatened with arrest, which for us, potentially meant deportation. Being accused of going to dig up a graveyard is surprising,
not really a ‘bucket list’ experience. Of course, we didn’t even know there was a
graveyard at the end of the RV road and none was indicated on our map. Tensions
were defused slightly when we assured the officer we worked at a university and
were not here to steal artifacts from ‘old Indian graves’. We also pointed out that we
would not have approached him for information if our intentions were nefarious.
We left with a warning and the officer’s assurance that he would be ‘checking up
on us’. Off we went, wadering up the overgrown road lined with cement pads of
former RV sites. About 45 min later, seemingly nearing the end of the road, we
arrived in an exceedingly overgrown graveyard; the grasses and bushes were so high
you could barely see the headstones. Was this the ‘old Indian burial ground’ to
which the officer referred? Well if it was, a few folks had been buried there in the
late 1990s, and although the graveyard seemed somewhat out of place and totally
abandoned, it didn’t strike us as old or Indian. After looking around briefly at the
range of dates on the headstones to see how old this cemetery was, I remember one
in particular…C.G. 1942–1996.
Fig. 10.4 Paleoearthquake evidence in an Oregon saltmarsh. (a) The dark-light sediment couplets,
indicated by the white arrows, may each indicate sedimentation following a paleoearthquake. (b)
Close-up showing the darker brown, high marsh peat overlain by a small tsunami layer (blue-gray
fine sand) and atop that light gray, low marsh/tidal flat silt. (Image by A.D. Hawkes)
10 Earthquake-Driven Coastal Change: Ghost Forests, Graveyards…
officer with a paper map asking for information on our location. He briefly explained
our goals to search in the marsh for earthquake evidence, but what followed was a
very troubling comment by the officer. He informed us that digging up ‘old Indian
burial grounds was a federal offence, punishable by arrest and jail’. Imagine our
disbelief and nervousness when we were threatened with arrest, which for us, potentially meant deportation. Being accused of going to dig up a graveyard is surprising,
not really a ‘bucket list’ experience. Of course, we didn’t even know there was a
graveyard at the end of the RV road and none was indicated on our map. Tensions
were defused slightly when we assured the officer we worked at a university and
were not here to steal artifacts from ‘old Indian graves’. We also pointed out that we
would not have approached him for information if our intentions were nefarious.
We left with a warning and the officer’s assurance that he would be ‘checking up
on us’. Off we went, wadering up the overgrown road lined with cement pads of
former RV sites. About 45 min later, seemingly nearing the end of the road, we
arrived in an exceedingly overgrown graveyard; the grasses and bushes were so high
you could barely see the headstones. Was this the ‘old Indian burial ground’ to
which the officer referred? Well if it was, a few folks had been buried there in the
late 1990s, and although the graveyard seemed somewhat out of place and totally
abandoned, it didn’t strike us as old or Indian. After looking around briefly at the
range of dates on the headstones to see how old this cemetery was, I remember one
in particular…C.G. 1942–1996.
Fig. 10.4 Paleoearthquake evidence in an Oregon saltmarsh. (a) The dark-light sediment couplets,
indicated by the white arrows, may each indicate sedimentation following a paleoearthquake. (b)
Close-up showing the darker brown, high marsh peat overlain by a small tsunami layer (blue-gray
fine sand) and atop that light gray, low marsh/tidal flat silt. (Image by A.D. Hawkes)
10 Earthquake-Driven Coastal Change: Ghost Forests, Graveyards…