The Old Pioneer Cemetery, on Harrison Road, is going to get cleaned up.

At least that’s Kathy Smith’s hope.

She’s organizing a work party for Friday, April 25 at 9 a.m. to clean up the abandoned cemetery.

“Most people expect that when they are buried their cemetery will be taken care of,” Smith said.

She said she didn’t want any recognition for organizing the cleanup, but, she said, no one was taking responsibility.

“The city won’t take responsibility for it,” she said. “Nor will the county.”

The property is not on city land. But the Selah Kiwanis Club has paid the mosquito control and weed control assessments at least for the last ten years, said Kiwanis treasurer, Dale Novobielski.

“Apparently the county views it as tax-exempt property,” Novobielski said. “But even when it’s exempt you have to pay these assessments.”

According to the Selah Story by Robert Lince, Selah Valley’s first cemetery was “on the edge of the McAllister homestead where the road passed through the valley. Old records tell a few were buried here, including the wife of the turbulent McAllister and Alfred Henson, the valley’s first settler.”

After the railroad went through the middle of that cemetery, a George Taylor “donated two acres to the people of the Selah Valley for a cemetery.”

“The first burial, according to the Yakima Democrat, was that of Mrs. Anthony Bastion [sic Bastian].”

Lince said Taylor’s donation was ironic, because a few months after his donation, he was accidentally killed.

The location of the cemetery is on part of Taylor’s original homestead of 1866, and is on Harrison Road about a quarter mile off of North Wenas Road.

The latest date on a tombstone is around 1911. Many of the wooden headstones are gone, and many that remain have no dates or names on them.

Some of the marble headstones can still be read.

The first attempt to restore the cemetery, according to Lince, was in 1922 when the ladies of the Selah Christian Church, (about to celebrate its 100th anniversary), “formed the Cemetery Association and gave social to raise money to improve this cemetery.”

One of the ladies quoted in the Selah Optimist, said “Quite a number of people have been buried there. I was surprised at the number of headstones, however, it should be kept better.”

Smith agrees with that unknown lady of 88 years ago.

Smith said anyone who wants to help beautify the cemetery should bring gardening tools, a lunch and water.

Because burning is not allowed at the cemetery, Smith hopes someone with a pickup will show up to help that day.

“People have forgotten their loved ones out there,” Smith said. “It bothered me, and I wanted to clean it up.”

In the Selah Story, Lince said the property was not on the tax rolls. It was given to the people of Selah.

“It’s up to us then to take care of it,” Lince said.

The Kiwanis Club will also participate with the project. Novobielski said the club had discussed doing it as a project, but nothing got scheduled.

“But now we’ll go in and help them out,” he said.