Seldovia Hillside Cemetery

The first cemetery in Seldovia was located near the Russian Orthodox Church. A number of sites were located on the hillside just below the church above Main Street near the present ferry dock. Adam Bloch was the first person buried in this spot and there are several fenced-in family plots still there.

The majority of these graves, however, were located at the base of the hill, closer to the beach and were marked with Russian Orthodox crosses, but no names. Most of the graves in this lower section were native Alaskans who had died in three epidemics of measles (1900), influenza (1918) and pneumonia (mid-1920s).

Seldovia City Cemetery

In 1935, Frank Raby donated a parcel of land about ½ acre in size to the City of Seldovia to be used for a new cemetery. The site is actually outside of city limits on the road to Jakolof Bay. The first person to be buried in the new cemetery, in 1936, was Terry Meehan, a 10 year old boy who accidentally shot himself when out hunting.

The 1964 earthquake caused the land around Seldovia to settle approximately 7 feet. This resulted in many of the Russian Orthodox graves in the original cemetery being periodically inundated during high tides. As part of the post-earthquake Urban Renewal Program, the city contracted with Walter Muller, a mortician from Kodiak, to relocate 285 of these graves to higher ground in the new city cemetery. These relocated graves were placed in 6 rows of mounds along the uphill side of the other graves in the new cemetery, and were originally marked with Russian Orthodox crosses. Fewer than ten of them are identified with actual gravestones.

In 1971, Frank Raby donated additional land to greatly expand the cemetery site to about 3 acres. Today the City Cemetery contains approximately 700 graves which mirror the town’s ethnic diversity. Among these are Alaska Native, Russian, Scandinavian, “Lower 48” and even Japanese forebears who built Seldovia.