Long-Forgotten: Tom Sawyer Island

.
I've done posts on all ... the ... Mansion ... graveyards (total of eight, by my calculations; but it depends on how one chooses to count them). Here at LF we've also included a well-received excursus on the three graveyards on Tom Sawyer Island. This led to a post on other long-forgotten graveyards in the park, like the one on Rainbow Ridge and a special one-off at the Mansion in 2000.

There are two more boneyards that I have promised at one time or another to cover someday, and I guess that day is today. Even though it may seriously be questioned whether either of these is really worth a post here, it doesn't matter. I said I'd do 'em, and by Gore, do them I shall.

And then that's it. I am aware that still other DL graveyards once existed (like the cluster of tombstones around the vulture's tree in America Sings), or still do exist (like the "boot hill" setting in the Frontierland shooting gallery), but I'm skating on thin enough ice as it is.

Alice's Churchyard

If you like the little stone church in the "Alice's Village" portion of Storybook Land, you will definitely want to check out this post by Kevin Kidney. I'll lift two pix from there to show the germinal history of the building, but I recommend you go see the rest of the photos at Kevin's blog.

This next photo is currently backwards at Kevin's site. I've flipped it around.

Here's fun fact number one: The windows in the church are real; that is, genuine leaded stained glass! Frank Armitage designed them, and Disney legend Harriet Burns made them.

Fun fact number two: The truly odd thing about this church is that it's completely gratuitous. There is no parish church building, let alone churchyard, anywhere in the Alice books or in the 1951 Disney film. True, you can see the tower of Christ Church Oxford in the distance in the opening scene, but that's hardly the same thing, and no one in the story makes any reference to it. Someone at Disney just wanted to do a typical English parish church, period, and "Alice's Village" provided the necessary excuse for making one and placing it in Storybook Land.

Three cheers to that someone. I must confess to a strong weakness [sic] for English churches, so it's no surprise that this is my favorite building in Storybook Land. I've got several books on English church architecture, as a matter of fact, with heavy emphasis on the humble but often very ancient parish church.

Something I find quaint and curious is that in addition to the fact that these old churches always have graveyards beside them, on occasion the churches themselves function like grave markers. There are about 3000 lost villages in the British Isles, hamlets and towns no longer extant, wiped out by the plague in many cases, and after all these centuries it is sometimes the case that the village can only be located because the ruins of its church are still there. Being the only stone building in the village, it survived while everything else gradually disappeared.

Lo, the hamlet of Low Ham. Only the parish church still stands, like a tombstone for the lost village.

But I digress. Back to Alice. Like any ancient parish church, Alice's includes a churchyard. Since it's still there, this lilliputian cemetery isn't so much long forgotten as easily forgotten. It's charming, but beyond that, what is there to say? Well, there is one thing I've noticed, and I suppose this will have to qualify as fun fact number three: Unlike other Disneyland graveyards, whenever they do some gardening/landscaping/painting/ that entails uprooting the tombstones, they put them back any old way they please. Little attempt is made to keep the markers in any particular spots or to replicate the old design when a new one is made. A simple photo survey shows this clearly enough (as if we needed an excuse!).

Here's a "magic eye" 3D version of the church when it was brand new.

Note that the greenery around the scene has not yet filled in.

A larger size:

The two shots below show the churchyard some time later, but still in the 50's,
and there are already noticeable differences between the two layouts.

1968:

Perhaps a year later, a lot has changed:

A close-up. Pity we can't read what's on the stones:

The 80's:

1993:

2005:

2008. Reduced to a small, tight, cluster in a corner:

2013:

A close-up (Dave DeCaro seems to have a special interest in the little stones as well):

By 2015, they are spread out again:

Hmph. No respect for the dead if they're only three inches tall, and this despite the vehement

protest of both the book and the Alice film itself that three inches is a very good height indeed.

In the early history of the first pet cemetery at the Haunted Mansion (on the north side), we saw some degree of carelessness with regard to the placement of the animal markers, but nothing like the cavalier attitude we see here. You will recall that when someone treated the Fort Wilderness cemetery in this way, a subsequent Imagineer put the grave markers back where they belonged, indignantly, one supposes.

A Mansion Tribute? Little Chance, Very Little

In the 2008 and 2013 shots you can see that one of the tombstones is painted in the fashion of an authentic 16th-18th century grave marker, complete with a crude winged-skull icon at the top:

I only mention it because most of the headstones in the Mansion's graveyard jamboree scene are also designed to reflect that era, and a few of them also sport the popular winged-skull image. There's nothing close enough here to suggest that the Alice stone is an actual tribute to the Mansion. Almost certainly it's merely a matter of aping a similar style from the same, broad time period. Still, it's fun to wonder about it. A little.

The Poison Waterhole

Very much in the "long forgotten" category this, but it may be doubted whether it counts as a graveyard at all. It isn't even a deliberate deposit of the deceased, like the good old Heap o' Skulls™ over in the Jungle Cruise:

"This place is more fun than a canoe fulla crania!"

But for some reason it seems to belong in the group. Here's the story. When the Rainbow Caverns Mine Train first opened in 1956, the Living Desert had a poisoned waterhole scene in it, a place where many cattle had apparently died. The waterhole was really part of the Stagecoach, Conestoga Wagon, and Pack Mule attractions more than the Mine Train. It disappeared pretty early, probably when the ride was revamped in 1960 and became the Mine Train through Nature's Wonderland and the Wagons and Stagecoach were axed. If so, the originally toxic scene was there four years at most.

You rarely find direct photos of it. Usually, you only see it in the corner of a picture of something else! It seems that most of the time it was dry, but it was always recognizable by the warning sign in the middle of it and the cattle bones around it.

In this old photo the waterhole is on the extreme left, and the sign is not visible, but it gives a good idea of the general location vis-a-vis the various means of conveyance through the Living Desert of the '56-60 era. (While you're at it, check out the utterly unconvincing pueblo buildings atop the rockwork. The lesson here, my fine young junior Imagineers, is that there are limits to how far perspective may successfully be forced, even at Disneyland.)

Oh, and here's your proof that sometimes the waterhole actually did have water in it:

There's been some discussion about what the sign read. It wasn't easy to decipher, but... Long-Forgotten to the rescue!

The shape and design of the sign remind me of the original riverfront grave markers on Tom Sawyer Island:

I'm not sure what is signified by the odd, blobby shape. An old, decayed board?

A rough cross-section taken from a felled tree or a tree stump?

As a reward for reading this far, here's a newly unearthed photo (posted 1-10-20),

showing that 1956 original riverside tombstone pair, courtesy of good ol' Dave.

I tend to lump the poisoned waterhole in with the lost graveyards of Frontierland, even though it's technically not a graveyard. Based on that final observation above, I suppose you could justify it as an addendum to the TSI graveyard post, but seriously, I wouldn't think about it too much. Just roll with it and enjoy the show, folks.

**************

Regions Beyond

I've vacillated a long time about doing this post, because it's not really Mansion-related. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure that the topic will be of special interest to Forgottenistas. Also, it's a topic no one else seems to have covered, which appeals to my twisted sense of pity. By rights it should be given a mini-blog of its own, but I've decided to put it here where it's more likely to be found by an appreciative audience. If you put "Excursus" on something, you're pretty much bullet-proof anyway.

1957 Souvenir Map

I'm talking about the Tom Sawyer Island graveyards, of which there have been three. One of them just recently disappeared, another disappeared decades ago, and the third was barely there, lasting only from 1956 to 1957. Most of you probably know about the first one, a lot of you probably know about the second. But the third? Not so much. So stick around and maybe learn something.

These burial grounds were the immediate precursors to the Haunted Mansion's outdoor graveyards, and remember too, that the Mansion was at one time considered part of Frontierland, so I suppose those considerations give us further flimsy pretext for taking up the topic here at LF.

The Late, Great, Fort Wilderness Graveyard

For those of you reading this at some point far into the future of this writing, know that Tom Sawyer Island was closed while the Rivers of America were drained as part of the initial Star Wars Land construction. It re-opened in July 2017. Not surprisingly, some changes were made on the island while it was closed. Tom's Treehouse is now only a prop, and the graveyard behind Fort Wilderness is gone, presumably to make room for the new wing which was added to the Fort:

Before:

Vintage Disneyland Tickets

After:

I hope that the little cemetery may some day return in some form, but I'm not optimistic, now that I've seen for myself how little suitable space is still back there.

Here's an amusing and amazing bit of info. Guess who designed/drafted the headstones in the old Fort W cemetery? According to retired Imagineer and Disney historian Tom Morris, it was Dean Tavoularis, who went on to become production designer for such well-known films as the Godfather series, Apocalypse Now, and many others. As of this writing (summer 2020), Tavoularis is still alive at 88.

My Loafing Place

Seasoned Disneylanders know that there are some quiet spots in the park where you can get away from the crowds on busy days and relax for a bit in relative peace and quiet. In my opinion, the very best of these was the graveyard behind Fort Wilderness. A few years ago I was at DL in mid-summer on a couple of extremely crowded days and was nevertheless able to sit around back there entirely alone. I'm sure many LF readers were already aware of this tranquil hollow. (And if anybody thinks I'm going to reveal where others are, they're crazy.)

Nowadays, it's even deader back there, I imagine, than when the imaginary dead were back there.

Stuff from the Park
The 1960s

The above is another great shot from the 1960s, courtesy of Dave. Check out a close-up HERE.

Awesome shot from 1977, courtesy of Gorillas:

Would you like to put yourself there in the 1990s? Here's a "magic eye" 3-D:

1994

Tom Sawyer Island opened to the public in 1956, and the graveyard was there
at least by 1957. You can see it on the 1957 souvenir map and in 1957 photos.

In the original version of this post, I suggested that the graveyard was in all probability

there when the island opened, but these 1956 photos prove that it was not there yet.
It seems that originally, you could go into the fort, but not around it or out the back of it.

vic&becky on flickr

But here it is in August of 1957...

And here it is in a remarkable 1958-ish photo:

Another from about the same time, from "DisneyHistory101"

In 2024, Bill Cotter posted this beauty from 1959:

There were sometimes as few as ten but usually eleven or twelve graves. However, there were at least eighteen different headstone varieties over the course of its existence. Although a few of them did shift around a bit (kinda like the HM berm graveyard that way), the majority remained in their original locations. The one exception to this took place during a rehab that probably took place in the very early 80s (and definitely no later than 1987), when they were put back all higgledy-piggledy, and they stayed that way until the late 90s, when an authority with more respect for tradition evidently took notice of this outrage and restored them to their original positions. The most radical permanent change took place in 2009, when the whole graveyard was spun around 180 degrees. The layout of the graves was mostly preserved in the front row but mostly scrambled in the back.

Incidentally, Tokyo Disneyland faithfully copied many of the grave markers for their Fort, and in the cases of DL headstones that

were redesigned, the Tokyo versions invariably followed the old form, so sometimes photos of theirs are helpful for comparison.

Okay, let's get to the detailed review. Because this information has to be somewhere on the Internet, doesn't it?

These first nine are they which were there from the beginning (except Amos) and stayed to the very end.
It's tempting to call them the other, other "Nine Old Men," but some of them were women.

----Front row, left to right (typically thus):---

"Thaddeus Walker, 1812"

bottom left: Allen Huffmann, top left: webmikey flickr, right: Dave

"Rufus Finley, 1813"

(The date disappeared when the marker was redesigned in the late 90s.)

right and below: Davelandweb

"Amos Wilson, 1787-1862"

(NOTE: There is now good reason to think Amos Wilson was a real person. See the update below.)

And speaking of updates, we are surprised to learn that "Amos Wilson" was not the original epitaph on this marker. In the beginning, it was "H. T. Gillett." Harvey Gillett ran the WED drafting room from 1955 until 1963, when he died suddenly of a heart attack. That's probably when the marker was re-christened as an Amos Wilson tribute. (Perhaps it lost its "roof" at the same time.) Gillett was a well-established art director at Warner Brothers pictures before coming to Disney.

Disney 101

top left: princesskoko flickr, bottom left: Dave, top right: Regions Beyond, bottom right: Stuff

"Wing Lee, 1811"

left: princesskoko flickr

"W Pierre Feignoux, J'y Suis J'y Reste, 1809"

top left: princesskoko flickr, bottom left: Voyages Extraordinares, right: Dave

"Lieut. Laurence Clemmings, Fell Here Defending the Right
June 25 1810"

(The date was still there in the late 60's, but eventually it disappeared.)

left: Ron Snider; right: Bill Cotter at Vintage Disneyland on FB

top: Davelandweb

---Back row, left to right (typically thus):---

"Jno C. Sawyer, 1813"

(The cross-piece was curiously repositioned in '09 when they spun the cemetery around.)

left: Dave

"Eliza Hodgkins, Died June 7, 1812, Age 27 Years"

(Originally Eliza went topless. There was no "roof" on her marker. She
may also have been closer to the front row in the first couple of years.)

bottom: Davelandweb

"Sacajawea, Indian Scout"

bottom: Davelandweb

This tenth one was probably there at the beginning but didn't make it to the end.

"1813, Llewellyn Lloyd, Cholera, Aged 24 Mo"

Lloyd disappeared sometime in the late 90s. Maybe the epitaph was deemed just a little too sad for Disneyland.

This next, eleventh stone was not original. It was added sometime between 1977 and 1990 (that's new info), and it
stayed to the bitter end. It started in the front row towards the left but moved to the back and took Lloyd's place when it was removed.

"Ebinizer Browne, -1812-"

right: Regions Beyond, top left: Davelandweb, bottom left: princesskoko flickr

For the remaining grave markers, we have a potpourri of epitaphs on headstones dedicated to "unknowns" of two types. In the beginning there was this grave for an unidentified soul...

"Unknown Remains, Found July 24, 1812"

left: Ron Snider; right: Suzanne Peeler Khan at Vintage Disneyland on FB

It disappeared some time after 1977 (new info again) and was reborn in 1981 as
"Unknown Remains, Found 1805"

Davelandweb

And that one in turn was replaced with "Unknown Hostile, 1842, HM..ID."

left: Loren Javier; right: webmikey flickr

Reader Craig Conley points out that "HM" is the standard Latin abbreviation for hoc monumentum ("this monument"). His further suggestion that "ID" may mean idibus ("on the ides") is less convincing. I suspect it's simply idem (also abbreviated "ID"), a term commonly used in bibliographical notation with the meaning "the same [author as previously cited]," in order to avoid tedious repetition in multiple consecutive citations from the same author. But that's a technical usage. The word idem by itself simply means "same" or "identification." Thus, "HM..ID" could be an abbreviation for hoc monumentum ... idem, in this context meaning "this monument serves as (sole) identification," which makes admirable sense.

In all three forms that grave marker was found toward the center of the back row, the first version to the right of Sacajawea, the second and third versions to her left (the viewer's right, the viewer's left).

The second "unknown" variety was an open grave obviously there as a comic photo op: It was marked "Unknown Tourist" (later "Unknown Guest") followed by the current year, so it had to be updated annually. By the 90s it was just "Unknown Guest" without any date, and finally it was just left blank. It was probably there from the beginning and always found at the far right of the back row. It disappeared in 1981 or early 82 and returned when the "higgledy-piggledy" rehab was undone and the traditional layout was restored. It didn't survive the 2009 spin-around.

top left: Will Hathaway flickr, bottom left: Greg Nutt flickr, top right: Steve Stuart, bottom right: Mike Hiscano

Left: Suzanne Peeler Khan; Right: Bill Cotter at Vintage Disneyland on FB

Check out the amusing story in the Comments from Eddie Sotto ("Anonymous") explaining how and why the

photo-op empty grave disappeared in 1981 and was replaced by the "Unknown Remains, Found 1805" grave.

History Within the History [UPDATED Mar 26, 2018]

In the original post I wrote this: "Two of the headstones reflect real history in some form, while the rest are simply made up names, without any significance. At least I haven't been able to find any correspondents in history or among Disney employees. Sorry to disappoint. Don't you know I wish I had quaint background stories to tell about Amos Wilson and Thaddeus Walker, et al, but it seems to be the case that these dead men really do tell no tales."

But in March of 2018 reader James Wallace shared the following information in a comment:

"Amos Wilson was my Great Grandfather. He was a WW1 vet from Oklahoma. He worked in the shipyards during WW2. He was also an artist. He did all of the detailed painting on Walt Disney's yacht, and when Disneyland was built Walt remembered him and hired him to do the original painting on the Columbia. He also painted the original tea cups and the Carlsbad Caverns [sic. I'm sure he means Rainbow Caverns]. If Walt Disney liked you he named something in the park after you. It has always been a neat thing for my family. Hope they bring the cemetery back somewhere. There is a lot of history at Disneyland."

princesskoko flickr

And as of July 2020 we know that before Amos the marker was a tribute to another real person, Harvey Gillett (see above).

Besides Amos, the two headstones reflecting actual history are "Sacajawea, Indian Scout" and "W Pierre Feignoux, J'y Suis J'y Reste, 1809." I'm sure many of you already know that Sacajawea was the guide for Lewis and Clark during their 1804-1806 "Corps of Discovery" expedition into the American west. Her profile got a significant boost in 2000 when she showed up on new $1 coins (that no one wanted; our wise and benevolent government keeps trying to force the public to use dollar coins, and the public keeps saying No).

As for "W Pierre Feignoux, J'y Suis J'y Reste, 1809," the date is wrong and the name is meaningless, but the slogan is historical. If we want to properly catch the resolute and defiant tone, we should perhaps translate J'y suis, j'y reste along these lines: "That's where I am, dammit, and that's where I'm staying." It originated during the Crimean War, during the siege of Sevastopol in 1854-55. A French general of Irish descent named Marie Edme Patrice MacMahon had successfully captured a Russian fortification on a strategic hill but was told by another general to abandon it, since they suspected the Russians had undermined it and were planning to blow it up. MacMahon haughtily replied "J'y suis, j'y reste" and refused to budge. There was indeed an explosion, but it caused little damage to the French forces, and the siege ended soon afterwards when the Russians withdrew. Thus was born a French catch-phrase for heroic stubbornness.

Until recent days, the slogan spoke well enough for the headstone itself, since it did indeed stay right where it was planted for a very long time. That's where it was, and that's what it said.

Knott's Bury Farm

I'm not sure there is any need to look for an immediate inspiration for the Fort Wilderness cemetery, but if there was one, I'd say the "Boot Hill" graveyard at Knott's Berry Farm is as good a candidate as any. What's funny is that those are funny, whereas the Fort Wilderness graves are utterly grave.

1968

Lori Lynn

I suppose one could argue that the serious tone is due to the fact that 1956 Disneyland tended to present the Frontier experience with a straight face ("hard facts" and all that), but then there's that gag grave, breaking the fourth wall by referring to Disneyland's "tourists" and "guests" and put there strictly for yuks. At any rate, the quintessentially Mansionistic joke about you the visitor joining the resident revenants was already foreshadowed on Tom Sawyer Island in the fifties.

Always room for one more

Stumps

Before we move on, there's one more quirky and irresistible detail about the FW graveyard that I cannot pass by in silence. Before the 2009 flip, there were four fiberglass tree stumps in there. They were so realistic and so exquisitely done that they were . . . oddly beautiful things.

Yeah, I've already used this 2003 Allen Huffmann shot, but it gets my vote as the single best photo of the FW graveyard, so here it is again, and here it remains..

Someone in the model shop went to a lot of bother for those. Why? Well, if you look closely, you'll see that they are in circumference about the size of the logs that make up the Fort itself. You're supposed to think of this graveyard as something the settlers put into a clearing in the forest created by the cutting of timbers to build the Fort. I don't suppose that's too terribly important, but you hadn't thought of it, had you? And now that you have, it inspires your imagination to tell you a tale of how this thing came to be, does it not? And Disney does this sort of silent storytelling better than just about anyone, do they not? And pompous rhetorical questioning gets wearisome after awhile, does it not?

Let's move on to gravesite number two, shall we?

The Indian Burial Grounds

Stuff from the Park

Plenty of you remember this one as well, since it only disappeared in the 1990s after being a fixture on TSI since it opened in 1956. It was conspicuous enough to warrant inclusion on the park's McKim-inspired souvenir maps, beginning in 1966.

Dave and the Major have impressive collections of photos, facilitating a "through-the-years" survey of this elevated subject.

Notice how surprisingly much the sombre and yet colorful scene was altered during its long and silent career on the shoreline.

Just this morning (Oct 2, 2017), the Major put up a photo from 1956 showing the Lakota-type burial. The assumption originally was that this was a photo of the Indian Village scene on the west side of the river, but a close examination of the foliage and show pieces in comparison with the 1958 photo below convinces me that this is indeed Tom Sawyer Island and is our earliest photo yet of the tableau there.

GDB

1958

1963

1975

The burial style depicted is that of the Lakota Sioux:

The ring of buffalo skulls with the mound in the center is also authentically Sioux.

It was the site of ritual sacrifices and ceremonies in preparation for buffalo hunts.

Something you probably didn't know is that there was once a similar outdoor
tableau in the old Indian Village, over on the mainland where Critter Country is now:

Gorillas Don't Blog

That was in 1961, when Disneyland still took its educational role seriously. The text on the sign reads:

Indian Burial Sacred Ground

After death, a brave's body is wrapped, placed on high poles, and faced to the East...

The tall pole in front reveals his life story...The scalps prove his courage in war...
The buffalo skull shows he was a hunter...On the ground below are his weapons and tools

Here's another shot of it from Gorillas. Notice that the circle of buffalo skulls is also there.

Okay, it's time now to look at the third and most obscure of the lost TSI cemeteries.

The Riverfront Graves

We owe our original awareness of these graves to Dave. The photo is dated August 1956:

Even WDI Imagineers and seasoned DL historians were gaping at that one. Who remembered these? Amazing. Well, prepare to be amazed all over again, because these two are only HALF the story. They were in fact a second set, replacements for another pair in the same spot. The first set lasted no more than a few months before "Hintley" and "Campbell" here took their place.

Since the graveyard behind the Fort was not original to the 1956 opening but was definitely there by the second half of 1957, I suspect that the riverfront stones came out when the Fort graveyard went in. In support of this theory is the fact that one of the original riverfront stones had a similar epitaph to one of the Fort stones, and it's unlikely that both would have been on display at the same time.

Photos of the first pair exist, but the headstones are so easily overlooked in the relevant pictures that they are practically invisible. The two best photos I've seen are both from the Major.

Gorillas Don't Blog

I've collected a few other photos in which one or both markers can be seen. They're hopelessly blurry, but the photos themselves are
interesting enough in their own right to justify putting them up. Now you have all the photos of the original set that I have.

Gorillas Don't Blog

Peeky boo

This one I just discovered today (Sep 9, 2017):

Jon on flickr

Another one I discovered at the "DisneyHistory101" website in 2020:

It was probably because they were so hard to notice that they were quickly replaced with a more conspicuous set.

Here are the two pairs side by side:

You want the texts? Well, three out of four is the best I can do. Maybe you can do better.
[I've incorporated a good suggestion from reader Melissa on the third one]