River floods cemetery, but traffic causes damage

MORRIS – Sue Ader said people have sometimes worried that when portions of Evergreen Cemetery flood, caskets could pop out of the ground and float away.

“We’ve never had that happen,” she said.

Not that the cemetery floods all that often. She said the last time was five or six years ago.

“But when we get these heavy rains,” she said.

Ader is the secretary of the Morris Cemetery Association and the cemetery manager at Evergreen Cemetery. The cemetery has about 12,000 burials, she said, and it opened in 1853.

The flooding does cause some damage to the grounds, but not necessarily from the water.

Ader said residents on Cemetery Road will sometimes cut through
the cemetery to get around flood waters or barricades.

Cemetery Road is frequently closed due to flooding along the Illinois River. The road, which now runs along the southern edge of the cemetery, used to go straight through it. The old path is now overgrown, but people still use it.

“They’re driving over burials,” Ader said. “It’s where our Civil War veterans are buried.”

The path, which cuts along the northeast portion of the cemetery, runs nears an area with head stones arrayed in a circle. Not all of the burials have headstones there, she said.

The area has turned to mud, which Ader said they’ll have to fix when the water recedes and the weather warms up.

“It looks so bad,” Ader said.

It’s not the first natural disaster to hit the cemetery. Several years ago, a wind storm knocked down about 70 trees on the grounds, an event that closed the cemetery while they cleaned up, Ader said.

Ader said the cemetery is fortunate that it still has plots to sell and that it does business each year, bringing in money to help with upkeep.

She also said the association will also accept donations to help maintain the 40 acres.

The cemetery encourages people to come visit.

“We do try to keep it maintained and nice,” Ader said.