The story behind San Francisco’s pet cemetery

The passing of a pet can be as painful as losing a member of the family. So why don’t we honour them like family?

Lieutenant Colonel Swing of US Army fort Presidio in San Francisco decided to do just that.  According to legend, he cleared a plot of land to make way for a place to bury the army base’s dead service animals in the 1950s.

In the following years, approximately 2000 military families living on the base used this site to honour their beloved dogs, cats, birds, fish and even lizards, marking graves with a mini-tombstone or cross.

Some gravestones read “Otis - The Purrrrfect Cat” and “Our Knuckle Head - Parakeet To Paradise”. One wooden grave simply says “Frodo Was a Good Turtle”.

In the 1970s, the cemetery fell into disrepair. But an unofficial caretaker, an anonymous former Navy man, helped preserve the site.

Fifty years later and surrounded by construction work, it still stands. Community advocates helped save the cemetery from destruction in 2009 when a new overpass was built to alleviate traffic to and from the Golden Gate Bridge.

The site is now closed to new burials but it remains conveniently sheltered and protected by modern infrastructure, standing as a strong testament to the human-animal bond.