By Russ Hanson, Sexton, Wolf Creek Cemetery
WOLF CREEK – Ten volunteers spent Earth Day morning braving the cold weather and new snow at the 166-year-old Wolf Creek Cemetery, 10 miles north of St. Croix Falls along the River Road, for Cemetery Cleanup Day. They picked up tree branches, windblown plastic flowers and pinecones, trimmed shrubs and took down brown Christmas wreaths, preparing the 6-acre cemetery for summer mowing and Memorial Day after the winter of heavy snows and winds left the cemetery needing TLC. Using volunteers, the cemetery saves money in a time when cemeteries are hard pressed to survive.
Local cemeteries are struggling to keep up with the increasing maintenance costs and lower usage and so at this time of the year you will see newspaper notices for cleanup volunteers to help. Burial practices are changing to make less use of cemeteries. One’s ashes may be spread in the Scenic St. Croix River, or on a favorite hunting spot or in the backyard instead of a cemetery grave. Grave sales are needed to keep a cemetery viable.
Cemetery grounds maintenance costs are primarily for mowing. At Wolf Creek, mowing is bid and contracted out, ranging in recent years from $250-$300 per mowing for six to seven mowings per season. Cemeteries, with all of the stone obstacles, are difficult to mow, and thus costly.
When a grave is sold for $350 each at Wolf Creek (one full burial or two cremations), much of the price is set aside into a “perpetual care fund.” The interest from the fund is supposed to cover the cost of cemetery maintenance – the mowing. With years of almost zero interest rates, increasing mowing costs, and decreasing burials and grave sales, local cemeteries have struggled to pay the bills.
Cemeteries in Eureka, Laketown and Sterling towns have asked for and received support from the local towns, averaging about $1,000 per year. If a cemetery fails, Wisconsin law has it revert to the local government – the town in rural areas. They understand paying a little to help keep the cemeteries functioning with volunteers is far less costly than taking them over.
The Wolf Creek Cemetery Association, an all-volunteer-run nonprofit, will have its annual meeting on Monday, May 1, 7 p.m. at the Wolf Creek Church. The meeting is open to the public and is meant to allow the owners of cemetery burial rights to have a say in the ongoing cemetery operation, including electing board members, financial reports, discussion of plans, rules etc. Volunteer-run cemeteries are subject to many state laws, yet try hard to accommodate the needs of their neighbors at a time of grief and to make their wishes happen.
Trends in burials have to be addressed for a cemetery to stay viable. The Wolf Creek Cemetery has had requests for “green burials” where no cremation, embalming or concrete vault is used, just a canvas shroud, with the idea the body will return to nature. Burial of pets is becoming popular. And so, the WCCA has to plan for the future. As a member of the Wisconsin Alliance of Cemeteries they learn what other cemeteries, large and small are doing. Although they haven’t accepted green burials or pets, at the annual meeting those issues can be brought up and policies modified.
The Wolf Creek Cemetery has a long history, with some of the earliest settlers in the St. Croix Valley buried there. The cemetery was started by Dr. Samuel Deneen, the 1854 settler who made his home in Wolf Creek. He built a dam and mill that ground flour and sawed lumber, and farmed. He preached sermons as a lay minister as well as being a full-service doctor for the folks in Sterling and Eureka towns. Dr. Deneen lived to be 90 years old, about 50 years at Wolf Creek where as a doctor he brought you into the world, as a miller ground the flour for your bread, took care of you when you were sick, sawed the lumber for your house, barn, and built your final pine box, preached your funeral, and laid you to rest at the Wolf Creek Cemetery, on land he donated to the community. The volunteers of the WCCA and other local cemetery associations don’t try to do all of that, but are dedicated to making sure your final resting place is a peaceful, beautiful and reasonable-price place.
Most of the local cemeteries are visited on Memorial Day by local branches of the American Legion for recognition of the veterans in the cemetery. Wolf Creek has been doing this since the Civil War and has 125 veterans buried there. Memorial Day 2023 includes an 11 a.m. program at the cemetery and lunch after in the 1922 Wolf Creek School, now the home of the 136-year-old congregation of the Wolf Creek Methodist Church, served by the church ladies.
You can learn more about the Wolf Creek Cemetery at the website or Facebook page, Findagrave or contacting them at wolfcreekcemetery@gmail.com, website: wolf-creek-cemetery. Working with the Sterling Eureka and Laketown Historical Society, the old cemetery records are being digitized and organized to improve access, and so folks wanting more information can be helped more efficiently for family lot grave availability, genealogy and the ongoing cemetery operation.
Seen in the featured photo, ten volunteers spent Earth Day morning cleaning the historic 1857 Wolf Creek Cemetery, ignoring the cold weather and new snow and honoring some of the earliest settlers in the St. Croix Valley by cleaning the tree branches and debris of a winter of heavy snows and winds. Volunteers help keep rural cemeteries afloat in a time of low interest rates on perpetual care funds as well as folks choosing alternatives to buying a grave in a cemetery. Wolf Creek recently opened an addition that will allow for 1,500 new burials, part of a 50-year plan for the future. – Photo provided
