Crow Creek Cemetery to be fenced and protected

The Society of Black Hills Pioneers has turned its focus to the protection of another old cemetery that is known to house Crook County residents and is looking for help from this community to identify who exactly is buried there. The Crow Creek Cemetery was once fenced and visited, says Vernon Davis, but today has just a single grave marker within its borders.

“We’re going to put up a fence on Crow Creek Cemetery. It’s just across the Wyoming line into South Dakota, right off Red Hill Road,” says Davis.

“We’re just getting started. We’re looking for the descendents of the people in that cemetery and trying to figure out how many people are actually in that cemetery, as it hasn’t been used for a long time.”

The first step will be to find relatives, largely to find out more about the people who were buried there. It will help to find the descendents, Davis says, because, “They always have pictures and things of the people who are in there.”

Davis is sure that there are Crook County family members in the cemetery, but as for the descendents, “I just don’t know where they are.” It’s believed that some of the cemetery’s occupants are children who died during a diphtheria epidemic.

“It’s pretty much abandoned but the people who have relations in there want it cleaned up and a fence put around it and to see if we can find the stones,” he says.

“It’s been sitting out there in the middle of the field for years, so there is only one tombstone left.”

It has also yet to be confirmed exactly how many graves are located at the site, but the society has plans to solve that problem.

“We’ve got a ground-penetrating radar set up that we’re going to go in and find out how many people are in those graves for sure,” Davis says.

Known burials at the cemetery include William M. Tulloch, an infant, in 1891; Lawrence Miller, also an infant, in 1891; Clara, Grace and Ralph Rice in 1891; May Miller in 1894; Ernest Miller in 1884; Eliel Miller in 1896; and James W. Tulloch in 1896. The sole remaining grave marker belongs to Ernest Miller.

The cemetery itself sits near land that is thought to have originally belonged to the Schenk family, who lived there in around 1880 and reserved an acre for a cemetery. The cemetery sits to the west of the Tulloch home site, which was bought by the Tullochs when they arrived from Texas via covered wagon.

A committee has come together to take charge of the Crow Creek Cemetery project, including Davis and Don Simons, Joe and Doris Schenk, Dan Schenk, Dallerie Davis and Suzanne Boykin. If you have any information about occupants of the cemetery, please contact Davis at 307-643-1442.