our two-year partnership with the National Resources Con- servation Service (NRCS), a branch of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Working under the guidance of a technician based in Nebraska, the students conducted ground penetrat- ing radar (GPR) surveys of the newer cemetery in July 2003 in an effort to conclusively locate the mass gravesite. The results were indisputable: No mass grave existed. Local lore was “more or less bunk,” as Henry Ford once described his- tory set in tradition. I looked at my students; they looked at me. We asked the same question: Where were the bodies? Perhaps they were still buried in their original graves. Strange circumstances arose within a few days of the

radar surveys. When a sympathetic city official telephoned me with an offer to assist an out-of-state undertaker with an exhumation, a unique opportunity opened. It was totally inappropriate for my students, by crucial for my own under- standing of what might be found in unmarked gravesites. It would turn out the bones would come to us. The NRCS returned in October 2004, this time to the

state’s oldest municipal park for work at the old cemetery site. Using a newer generation of GPR equipment, suspected sites were scanned with almost immediate results. The park contained graves, but handheld GPS units were not accurate enough for the purpose of surveying. Enter the Idaho Trans- portation Department, who answered our call for training with the use of a total station: an electronic theodolite (tran- sit) integrated with an electronic distance meter (EDM) to read slope distances from the instrument to a particular point. We wanted to catalogue exactly where the graves were for future investigation without advertising their locations.

Ground-penetrating radar surveys, Normal Hill Cemetery, 2003 Help from Fellow Explorers

Anecdotal history can be useful at times. A conversation with a local metal detector enthusiast opened the door to extraordinary discoveries. He told me that on several occa- sions he had come across what seemed to be small white bones in the park. He dismissed the findings. I could not and set my students to an unusual task. Using our GIS map of grave locations produced by the GPR, we began probing the top

What was

done with the unidentified remains?

Normal Hill Cemetery

Row 74 radar scan, Normal Hill Cemetery national resources conservation service

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shann branting

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