China Beach was 1 mile away from the City Cemetery (1870-1898). The Kong Chow funerary chapel in Lincoln Park is the last remaining structure from that time.
NPS / Maya Rodriguez
San Francisco Board of Supervisors designated approximately 200 acres near Land’s End (now Lincoln Park) as a municipal cemetery in 1868. The City Cemetery extended west from 33rd Avenue to 48th Avenue and north from Clement Street to a bluff overlooking the ocean. At first, the cemetery was used for the relocated remains from Yerba Buena Cemetery (closed in 1854 to accommodate City Hall at Civic Center), and also accepted people who died without the means to pay for burial.In the late 1870s, the city began granting cemetery sections to local benevolent, social, and religious societies as a place where members of socioeconomically marginalized groups could be buried. City Cemetery was the only municipal burial place for these people after 1870.Between 1870 and 1898, more than 29,000 people were buried in City Cemetery. More than 6,300 were Chinese individuals whose bones were later disinterred and transported to China. The extent to which other societies and organizations removed their dead is unclear, but it is estimated that between 10,000 and 19,700 burials remain in Lincoln Park today. In 2022, the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association held a ceremony at the King Chow funerary structure (still present at the cemetery site), where they plan to hold annual ceremonies.For more information, visit the Lincoln Park History page on the DeYoung / Legion of Honor website.
Map of City Cemetery based on research by historians Alex Ryder and John Martini
