Oxnard Masonic Cemetery

Oxnard Masonic Cemetery (Free & Accepted Masons)
Pleasant Valley Road & Etting Road
Oxnard, California 93033
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The Oxnard Masonic Cemetery was established in 1898 and the last known burial was in 1964. The cemetery still exists and it is possible to visit the location. The Oxnard Masonic Cemetery and the Japanese Cemetery are very near each other at this Pleasant Valley Road location.

The VCGS database contains 76 entries for this cemetery. Researchers should also search Find A Grave for this location.

Acknowledgements

These cemetery records in the VCGS database are from notes taken in September 1971. They are of names and dates that could be read on tombstones. Some were entirely covered by ice plant.

Below is a Los Angeles Times article about the Masonic Cemetery

13 June 1999

OXNARD — Somewhere in Hueneme Masonic Cemetery, beneath the weeds and ice plant, beneath the dry earth swollen by gophers, is Oxnard’s history.

City pioneers, whose names folks today would recognize from street signs, are buried in the cemetery’s overgrown plots. Now the South Oxnard Revitalization Committee is cleaning up the 101-year-old graveyard that they consider a city landmark.

On Saturday, volunteers raked the plots, carried away debris and swept off headstones. After a few more weekends of sweat and some fund-raising, organizers hope the eucalyptus-lined cemetery at Pleasant Valley and Etting roads will resemble its early years, with maintained paths and a fence surrounding it.

“We don’t know what it looked like originally,” said Christie Reischel, who has helped organize the restoration project. “There are a lot of missing headstones. It has been vandalized over the years.”
The Hueneme Masonic Cemetery was incorporated in 1898 by an association whose directors included farmer Winfield Scott Saviers and banker Achille Levy.

The oldest headstone in the two-acre graveyard dates from 1899, and the most recent burial occurred in 1964.

Between those years, it appears only about half of the 109 plots were used. One small marker is believed to be the grave of a Civil War veteran. Several others are dedicated to children who died soon after birth.
The cemetery still holds mysteries. Many of the first to be buried there cannot be accounted for today. Records show, for example, that blacksmith and frontiersman James Saviers, the father of W.S. Saviers, died in 1904 and was buried in Hueneme Masonic in an unmarked grave. He may have been laid to rest with an arrowhead stuck in him, the result of an Indian attack near Sacramento decades before. James Saviers’ body may have been among those moved from Hueneme Masonic about 1918, after the opening of Ivy Lawn Cemetery, said Eileen Tracy, who participated in Saturday’s cleanup effort and has researched the Saviers family.

A major Oxnard road is named after the early Ventura County farmers.
“Being a history buff, I just think we should be proud of our history and our roots and not neglect things like cemeteries,” Tracy said.
Hueneme Masonic has not been tended to regularly in about 40 years.
Oxnard-area Masons, who still control the corporation that owns the cemetery, have mowed the area once or twice a year, cleanup volunteers said.

The cemetery and the land near it have been popular spots for teenagers and their four-wheelers, said Ron Reischel, another organizer of the restoration project. A few beer cans are scattered near the graves.