Theme Park Construction Uncovers Forgotten 1800s Cemetery

The days were passing in 1970 and Lewis H. Woolsey had a problem. A big problem.

Surveying the 80-acre landscape of what would become Kings Island’s parking lot when the park opened in 1972, the construction project manager had 35,000 dump truck loads of dirt to move.?He needed the project to stay on schedule and standing in his way was a cemetery, hidden somewhere on the giant plot of land. Before excavation could begin, his crew needed to find the cemetery and protect it. The clock was ticking.

The small early American cemetery, today known by most as the Dog Street cemetery, had been largely untended since 1890. At the time of Kings Island’s construction there was no Kings Island Drive (the road in front of Kings Island’s property), and the bygone cemetery was located just far enough off Columbia Road on private property, that it was not easily accessible by the public. The local company town, Kings Mills, had just been incorporated in 1884, and in the years that followed, the cemetery’s maintenance and upkeep from the local township had fallen off.

If ever there were a ‘needle in a haystack’ challenge, this was it. How do you find a forgotten, overgrown cemetery on 80 acres of unexcavated land?

Found out how, as the story continues on the Kings Island Blog.