On Day of the Dead, visit local grave sites of the famous and infamous (From the Seattl...

(Jimi Hendrix is buried in Greenwood Memorial Park Cemetery in Renton. His grave site attracts thousands of visitors yearly)

To celebrate Dia de los Muertos, honoring lost loved ones, here's a guide to grave sites of noted residents from our past. By Tan Vinh Seattle Times staff reporter The spirits would turn over in their graves if they saw how some of the living treat Dia de los Muertos like Halloween. "The Day of the Dead," as it is called, asks people to celebrate the spirits, not fear them, with Mexican families building elaborate altars, leaving marigolds and food to pay their respects to the spirits, believed to return on Nov. 1 and 2. In honor of that holiday, we look at some of the Puget Sound area's sacred and famous grave sites, including one body that showman P.T. Barnum supposedly tried to buy:

We start at Seattle's Lake View Cemetery, 1554 15th Ave E., on Capitol Hill. Historians always start at Lake View. Much of the city's history is buried here — the famous and the infamous. • Madame Lou Graham operated arguably the most successful brothel during the mid-1800s at the corner of Third Avenue South and South Washington Street. She ran the classiest brothel, too, historians say, complete with piano player and a chef. Her grave is near the cemetery's exit, near Volunteer Park. • Mary Ann Conklin (1821-1873). Her original gravestone lists 1887, the wrong death year. She operated the city's first hotel, The Felker House, but is known more for operating a brothel on the top floor. Also known as Mother Damnable, Conklin was infamous for her hot temper and foul language. Stories had it that at least six men were needed to lift her coffin from a flood zone to Lake View Cemetery because her body had calcified into stone after water had seeped through her coffin. Scientists, though, doubt that could have happened. Nevertheless, P.T. Barnum heard about a 1,000 pound stone body and unsuccessfully tried to buy her body for his freak show, according to local historian Rick Boetel. Most of the city's founders and their extended families are also buried here. (A few are also buried at Mount Pleasant Cemetery in upper Queen Anne, 700 W. Raye St.) Among those buried in Lake View include Chief Sealth's daughter Princess Angeline, Arthur Denny, David Swinson "Doc" Maynard, Thomas Mercer and Henry Yesler. Maynard, one of Seattle's founding fathers, has a new granite stone. The local branch of E Clampus Vitus, a historical preservation group, along with other civic groups and historians, raised money to buy a $1,200 tombstone for Maynard. His old, weather-beaten marble tombstone has been donated to Seattle's Museum of History & Industry. None, though, draws more tourists than the grave of martial-arts film star Bruce Lee. Fans from around the world, especially China, make the pilgrimage to his red marble headstone, inset with a ceramic picture made in Hong Kong. His only son, Brandon Lee, also an actor, is buried beside him. advertising In 1995, several news reports said that Lake View declined to have rock star Kurt Cobain buried there because cemetery officials already had their hands full dealing with large crowds for Lee's memorial. (Cobain was cremated and his ashes were scattered at a New York Buddhist temple and in the Wishkah River near his hometown, Aberdeen. Some ashes were given to his widow, Courtney Love. Last year, Love reported that someone stole his ashes from her Los Angeles home.) For more info, see www.lakeviewcemeteryassociation.com and findagrave.com. Other interesting sites around the area: Chief Sealth, also known as Chief Seattle, a great chief of the Suquamish and Duwamish tribes, for whom the city was named, is buried on the Kitsap Peninsula in the Suquamish Memorial Cemetery, 7076 N.E. South St., Suquamish. His gravesite is getting a $100,000 makeover that will be completed by next summer. There's a new wheelchair-accessible walkway and a new concrete and stone ring around the grave, engraved with a famous speech in English and his native Lushootseed language. The site is open to the public during renovation, with visitors recently leaving a rolled-up cigarette and handmade bracelets. Check www.chiefseattle.com/history/chiefseattle/chief_gravesite.htm. Rock icon Jimi Hendrix is buried in Greenwood Memorial Park Cemetery, 350 Monroe Ave. N.E., Renton. His gravesite draws about 50,000 to 60,000 visitors annually, with hundreds of fans from around the world visiting during Christmas holidays and on Hendrix's birthday, Nov. 27. On Nov. 26, 2002, Hendrix's body was reburied under a large granite dome supported by three marble columns. See www.jimihendrixmemorial.com.

Article Reference:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/outdoors/2010155476_nwwdead29.html?cmpid=2628