While visiting New Orleans a couple of years ago, a tour guide advised that the
“Cities Of The Dead” were created as a result of space limitations and
have nothing to do with the recurring story that the dead can’t be buried underground
in New Orleans because the city is below sea level and the coffins would quickly
float to the surface. What’s the real story??
Space limitations? How does an above-ground coffin ensconsed in stone take up less space than a wooden coffin underground with a headstone above it?
I’ve been all over Southern Louisiana and can verify that these types of cemetaries are everywhere, not just the crowded New Orleans area. Hell, there’s one just a mile or two from where I live in Lafayette (2.5 hours from N.O.).
Also, very, very few buildings have basements in Southern Louisiana. My Cajun wife was 24 before she entered her first one (while visiting up North).
Some people go even furthur, building their houses on stilts or cinder blocks, a foot or so off the ground.
Ever seen the movie Hard Rain? The movie takes place in a flooded town. Near the end is a scene in a cemetery where coffins can be seen floating to the surface and drifting away in the current. That’s why they build those cemeteries like that in southern Louisiana.
I’m very sure that it is the water table that negates the usefulness of a traditional “below-ground” cemetary. I know for a fact that one of the interstate highways ( I think it’s I-10) going thru the state for a stretch is basically a really long bridge(pontoons?) built to avoid the swampland, etc.
I toured a few New Orleans cemeteries with my best friend, who lives in N.O. One guide (who looked just like Billy Mumy) told us that “when they used to try to bury people underground, they’d dig the hole, which would start to fill with water. So they’d have to drill holes through the cofffin and jump up and down on it to make it sink before filling the hole in.”
Neither of us believed that for a minute, but what a great mental image!!
The city is below sea level.
Coffins would float to the surface.
Space limitations? Of what kind, where? The space not being used is underground. Is that space limited? That makes no sense at all–unless one considers the limitation of placing corpses below ground because of the water level, which negates the story you related.
If you heard it right, that tour guide was full of beans.
I dunno y’all! I know the space limitations are for real. I live near New Orleans, and this past spring we had to bury my g’pa in a New Orleans cemetary.
The way it works is the plot is owned by the family. They put the coffin of the deceased on a stone slab and cover it with the other stone pieces. Years later when the next family member dies, they’ll pull the slab from underneath the previous coffin and the decaying corpse will fall underneath into another area. Then they can put a new coffin in place of the old one. It was weird looking on the tombstone cause there were so many names on it - all their bones were below where they put my g’pa.
And they DO bury above ground also because of the water. My dad’s told me stories about when it would rain too much (hurricane and whatnot) the coffins would come to the surface. It really happened.
A year and a day is required, I think. Sometimes that happens…
Six miles downriver from the center of New Orleans is the Chalmette National Cemetery, located on the site of the Battle of New Orleans.
There are more than 15,000 internments. All below ground.
Why? It is considered one of the highest elevations above sea level in the greater New Orleans area, and burials in national cemeteries are always below ground. If I recall, it is either a law or regulation for national cemeteries.
I thought part of it had to do with the fact that the churches did not actually own the land under their property, and therefore could not sell it to others as plots.
This is correct. Lafayette to New Orleans via I-10 is about a 120 mile drive. I’m not sure exactly how many miles of that is on bridges, but I’d put it somewhere around 1/3 to half the distance.
On a semi-related note, is it true that one reason there are so many shotgun houses (long and narrow homes in which a shotgun fired through the front door could go through every room and out the backdoor) in Louisiana is because taxes were based on the width of a house, or is it this just a jamba-lie?