Category: Article

Zinc headstones began appearing in American cemeteries around 1870 and continued into the early twentieth century. Taphophiles (cemetery buffs) call these markers “zinkies”. Zinc plates were cast and sand-blasted to create a matte finish resembling stone. The surface was then covered with linseed oil and hit with high pressure steam, a process called “steam bluing,” […]

In the frighteningly dangerous early timber industry, the Woodmen of the World offered life insurance plus the trappings of a fraternal order. Employees of formative Placerville timber enterprise J. & J. Blair were most certainly members. If they became victims of a broken cable or any one of hundreds of other all-too-common misfortunes, their families […]

1849 – Israel Luce arrives as a miner and quickly returns to his prior profession, stone carving. Luce and Loveland’s Marble Works opens in late 1850. Andrew M. Aitken arrives from Scotland. Like Luce, he fails as a gold miner and returns to his native profession. Aitken has an interesting deformity, an extra thumb on […]

Did you know that early headstone carvers sometimes signed their work as a form of advertising? Most signed markers were carved between 1860 and 1890. Finding these signatures is not easy. If present, the signature is typically on the lower bottom right of the headstone, usually, but not always, on the front. Complicating matters, tombstone […]

Did you know that the state’s first marble quarry was right here in El Dorado County? The unique, blue-veined marble it produced was on par with imports from Italy or Vermont … and a lot closer. For the first few years of the Gold Rush tombstones were carved from slabs of marble shipped from either […]