A very unpleasant task Before the huge Quabbin Reservoir project destroyed and covered the four towns of Prescott, Enfield, Dana and Greenwich many of the towns’ possessions were moved. Including some homes, businesses and entire churches. One vexing problem remained, what to do about the graves in the 34 cemeteries that were scattered across the soon to be flooded valley. Only one solution could be found, to move each and every gravestone and grave. A difficult and unpleasant task that had to be done if the families of the decease could still come and visit. Of course now the question of what to do with the graves still remained. The answer was to form a new cemetery to rebury the dead. So the Quabbin Park Cemetery was established in around 1932 and the old graves were reestablished in the new graveyard. A total of 6,651 bodies were relocated here while about another thousand found new homes in other cemeteries. The new cemetery is over 100 acres but only about a third is actually used for gravesites. It still is an active cemetery and receiving new arrivals. A lovely cemetery that has a very park like feel to it. One of the good things that the people did was to keep careful records of all the old graves that they dug up. The records are kept in a nice building near the entrance. One of the very bad things that the people did was to just put the graves anywhere without any considerate of the location of the original graveyard. So the different graveyards and even towns are all mixed together. An unfortunately mistake. A unique cemetery that is actually a combination of many other much older graveyards. It must have been a difficult task to complete because disturbing the dead is never easy.
