Out on a series of sharp plateaus along the Gypsum Canyon Wilderness, just beyond fields of mustard plants and sunflowers blooming this Spring, you can see the beginnings of Orange County’s state veterans cemetery.
Officials are hopeful that by next Memorial Day, the cemetery that’s been debated for the last decade will be close to actually opening its gates.
When it does, it will be the first public cemetery to open in Orange County in a hundred years.
It’s become a Voice of OC Memorial Day tradition to check in on the veterans cemetery and update the public – a process this newsroom has covered continuously since the debate began back in 2014.
These days, the land is pretty much under lock and key, but we got a chance to look around.
A few huge Oak trees greet visitors at the front gate. Afterward, a series of dirt roads show the outlines of where a combination of several cemeteries will be laid out.
The road leading to the huge flag pole borders where the First Responders cemetery will be.
On a nearby plateau, just overlooking the flagpole, is where the public cemetery will sit.
And on the plateaus opposite and above, is where you will see veterans and allied soldiers laid to rest.
Once grading starts, which should be next year, the actual shape of the grounds will start to take place followed by the installation of maintenance and administrative and chapel buildings.
The project is also building walking trails into the design, which will wrap around the entire series of cemeteries.
For years, the site of the veterans cemetery was slated for Irvine on the former El Toro Marine Air Base, which has now largely been transformed into modern housing suburbs along with the beginnings of a Great Park.
Yet after numerous battles over competing land tracts, ballot initiatives and election cycles, veteran leaders opted to move the initiative to the Gypsum Canyon area near Anaheim Hills along the intersection between the 91 freeway and the 241 Toll Road.
The wilderness land tract – donated by Donald Bren and the Irvine Company in 2010 – is owned by the County of Orange and managed by OC Parks, with 283-acres granted to the OC Cemetery District to operate as a public cemetery with a portion to be eventually transferred to CalVet for use as a veterans cemetery.
To date, all 34 cities, the County of Orange, the state and federal delegations of elected officials and every VFW hall across OC have endorsed the Gypsum Canyon site with about $45 million in commitments from the county and state as well as private donors. State leaders also have opted for the site in their application for federal grant funding.
In 2022, OC veteran leaders put up a now-iconic, huge U.S. flag at the site, which can be seen from all directions near the 91 and 241.
Last July, Anaheim City Council members gave all the needed planning approvals and city public utility staff have since been working with the OC Cemetery District on the water and power infrastructure for the site.
“This project which will be the first of its kind in the world has required the participation and cooperation of multiple government agencies local, state and federal,” said Nick Berardino, a key leader on the effort as president of the Veterans Alliance of Orange County (VALOR).
“Each of them have been cooperative with each other and are very responsive. We are hopeful we will be moving dirt late this fall,” said Berardino, a Marine Corps combat veteran who fought in the Vietnam War.
The collaboration between Cal Vet and the Orange County Cemetery District has created a series of unique savings by combining the state veterans cemetery and the county public cemetery, as the agency was running out of room on its three managed sites across OC and didn’t have a site under previous plans in Irvine.
Having the veterans cemetery and the public cemetery share the site means lots of costs and efficiencies are shared.
“The advantages of working together is neither agency has to pay the full price for water and electric,”said Tim Deutsch, general manager of the OC Cemetery District.
“It’s been a learning lesson for us,” he added. “This is a first of its kind…a development we can utilize for our vets and as well as non-vets. It’s very unusual, all the levels of government that are working in collaboration.”
Deutsch also credited the City of Anaheim’s public utility as “a great partner,” helping to get power and water to the site, which opens up the way for more development of key infrastructure.
The cemetery district already established a well on the site to help with irrigation and Deutsch said recent planning innovations have crafted plans that require significantly less grading than previously planned – something that ultimately saves money.
And while final designs have yet to be crafted, Deutsch said that a recent decision to phase in grading of the property will allow it actually open up a bit sooner,
Given the different plateaus on the property, it actually lends itself to phasing in.
And going forward, having the local public cemetery as a manager is expected to generate savings and encourage professional management well into the future for not only this one site but the county’s public cemetery system.
“We’ve been operating three cemeteries since 1866,” Deutsch said, highlighting that “the new cemetery will help support the operating costs of our other three cemeteries.”