Point Sal Wharf Community Cemetery

Located on Vandenberg Space Force Base
Lompoc, California

(abandoned)

This small abandoned cemetery is not available to the public being located on Point Sal Road in the northwestern part of Vandenberg Space Force Base. It is an Archeological Historical Site, #SBa 759H [Site13]. It is approximately 100 feet east-west by 180 feet north-south and is surrounded by a barbed wire on metal post fence. It was established by Eliza Clayton Clark, the wife of Charles Haskell Clark, who was the wharf owner at Point Sal, to bury the sailors who washed ashore after several shipwrecks before the turn of the century.

In 1876 a five-man crew from a lumber schooner was drowned when coming ashore in a rowboat to scout. The Clarks recovered two of the drowned crew and buried them in the cemetery. The next year, wharf laborer Antone Perry was swept off the wharf during a storm and drowned. It is probable that he is buried in the graveyard.

In 1876 the Anna Lyle (or Anna Lisle) was wrecked there in a storm, and Mrs. Clark buried the sailors in the cemetery. In addition, wharf community residents were also most likely buried there. There are no gravestones and no known records of those buried in the cemetery.

The Santa Maria Parlor #246 Native Daughters of the Golden West put a monument on the site in 1948 with the inscription “In Memory of Pioneers Buried Here 1871-1888.”

No burial information available.

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