Monterey County Cemetery, Salinas, Monterey County, CA

Directions provided by Tim Reese 21 Aug 2009

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Monterey County Cemetery is on the South-East Corner of Natividad Road and Laurel 
Drive, Salinas, CA. The entrance is on the 70-80 block (east side of the street) right 
next door to a Chinese Cemetery (name unknown, I don' t read Chinese). A dirt drive-way 
road divides the two cemeteries. This cemetery is the coldest form of cemeteries. It is a 
county run cemetery; this is where the homeless/transient dead whose bodies were never 
claimed by loved ones are buried.  Also buried in this cemetery are jail prisoners who died 
in custody, and unidentified victims of crime. The ground sod there, if you can call it that, 
is drought cracked all over the 20-30 acre lot - cracks that span an average of 1 to 2 inches 
wide, the dead are marked with a 2-FT by 2-FT concrete square with a metallic number 
affixed in the center- some are number stamped into the concrete square itself. One must 
go to the County Records Dept. on 168 West Alisal St. in Salinas to look at the names 
buried there and match it to the number block.  When I surveyed this cemetery, I could only 
find two graves among an estimated 250-350 graves that had an actual name on it, and two 
that had some type of addendum attachments to the graves. The Monterey County Cemetery 
Sign is located on the Laurel Drive side of the Cemetery (North-Side). This is the lowest form 
of burial cemetery sites I have ever seen in Monterey County, or anywhere else.