Just off the Imperial Highway, on the border of Yorba Linda and Anaheim Hills lie the remains of Orange County’s first settlers.
The Yorba Cemetery, established in 1858 by Bernardo Yorba, is the oldest private cemetery in the county. It was originally created to hold Yorba’s closest friends and family, but ended up having over 400 burials, according to local tour guides.
Once a month, except May, OC residents can take a guided tour by Ann Nepsa, a genealogist and Melanie Goss, a mother-daughter duo that has been working together to restore the cemetery and educate people on its history since 2001.
Nepsa is the primary researcher and Goss presented the information during most of the tour.
Attendees can get a brief history of the birth of the cemetery, followed by a tour highlighting headstones of key historical figures in early Orange County’s settlement.
In early April, Tanya Ozuna and her daughter, both Yorba Linda residents, took the tour.
Ozuna appreciated the depth of information on the tour, especially learning about the estate while it was still a part of Mexico before it became a cemetery in 1858.
“Online you’re very limited from the full story and it was nice to get a lot more here,” Ozuna said.
What was once a part of a land grant that spanned 98,000 acres from Corona to Newport Beach in its heyday is on a one-acre plot now nestled between a tennis court and condo complexes, said the guide Melanie Goss during the tour.
The cemetery had gone through many changes since closing in 1939. According to Goss, it was a victim of vandalism, as teenagers would sneak in and steal from and damage the property.
Decades later, 1981, the county decided to protect the land and start restoring headstones and records.
They’re still in the process of that today.
There are people interred in the cemetery whose names are on street signs and shopping centers, such as Esperanza Village, Peralta Hills and Yorba Linda.
David Armbruster, 74, a Yorba Linda resident and attendee who has been a part of four different historical societies in different cities, applauds those who take charge in conducting the tours and educating those who visit.
“I think it’s important that everybody knows who came before us and did these things on our behalf,” he said. “I’m always in awe about how much people have sacrificed and how hard people work to make our history here.”
The cemetery, while having over 400 burials, has only 135 headstones. This was due to a multitude of reasons, including vandalism, relocation, and more. The team works hard to look for clues that indicate where the rest of the bodies are so they can be identified with headstones, but that can be a challenge without the right records.
The way around this: live recounts of the lives of people buried. Some of the interred have direct descendants alive today who have personal records of their lives and their burials. They are able to share those records with Nepsa and Goss who, upon verification, honor them with accurately placed headstones reflecting the style they would have back in the 19th and 20th centuries.
When asked what Goss believes is the biggest misconception about Yorba Linda, she said the belief that it was founded by Richard Nixon.
Nixon, the 37th president of the United States, grew up in Yorba Linda and is a household name in the city.
“People have no idea,” she added, “that the history of Yorba Linda actually started long before.”