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The Forgotten Cemetery at Home Depot

06/23/2010

The Jericho Turnpike, cutting east-west through Long Island, is pretty much a wasteland of strip malls, corporate office parks, and fast food chains…

…and the last place you’d expect to find anything of historical or cultural value is in the parking lot of a Home Depot.

I think that’s what makes this place so great.

Surrounded on all four sides by the Home Depot parking lot (also servicing the adjacent Modell’s and Old Navy), is this grouping of trees surrounded by a chain link fence…And if you actually take the time to look closer…

You’ll find what has to be the only 19th-century graveyard in the United States located in a Home Depot parking lot.

I first read about this on the excellent roadside Americana website, RoadsideAmerica.com, a few years ago, but only had the chance to see it for myself the other day…

“Surreal” is really the only word you can use to describe looking at graves of guys who died in the 1850’s…while a Home Depot shopper pushes his orange cart to his truck in the background.

This was once the family cemetery for the Burr Family, who first came to the United States in 1630 and arrived in Long Island in 1656, situating their family farm on land now owned by Home Depot. The cemetery was in use until about 1880. You can see it just below the purple dot:

It blows my mind that this has somehow survived, the only indicator that the area was once all farmland, and harkening back to a time when families might bury their dead on their own property.

This might be due to the fact that the farmland became an airfield during World War I, known as Brindley Field. Perhaps it was given special treatment during that time?

Though it’s in pretty bad shape, recent flag plantings show that someone still cares about the cemetery:

I really, really hope that Home Depot has a ghost problem.

-SCOUT

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Thomas

06/30/2016

THE Jericho Turnpike? Obviously written by some transplant “urban explorer” who would only know a “wasteland” if he looked back at the Midwestern shithole he came from.

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Nick Metrowsky

11/11/2016

I grew up 1 mile south of there. Until 1965, it was still empty land, until Modell’s Shopper World opened their store on the site. The only other establishment, on the property, at the time, was the Sinclair (then BP), now Hess gas station on the NE corner of Larkfield Road and Jericho Turnpike.

In 1965, south of Jericho was still farmland, until you came near Mason Cort and south, which was all homes built on other old Long Islander family land. The Wicks Family owned much of the land east of Larkfield to Commack Road. West of Larkfiled to Daly Road was owned by another family. Their home still stood until the mid-1970s; it was built in the late 1600s. The Wicks Home still stands about 1/4 west of Commack Road on the north size of the street, among all the 1960s style s]tract homes. All that farmland is pretty much gone to stores and housing. But, 50 or so years ago, it was a different world.

I remember the grave site and tried to read the grave stones. The Burr Family home was one of the Long Island manors set up long ago. The house is about 2 or so miles the north east. On name sake Burr Road, just west of present day Town line Road.

It still amazes me that this historical site is still in the middle of a parking lot.

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