An online database of the thousands of individuals buried at Mission City Memorial Park from 1864-1997 is now posted on the website of the Santa Clara County Historical & Genealogical Society.  The URL is www.rootsweb.com/~cascchgs/mission_cem/cemindex.htm.

The 30-acre cemetery located at 420 N. Winchester Blvd. is one of few city-owned cemeteries in California.  It is operated by the Parks & Recreation Department.

Although burials were made on the grounds on the City cemetery as early as the 1850s, the first recorded interment was September 13, 1864. Many pioneers who contributed to the growth of Santa Clara Valley are buried there. The cemetery also honors veterans from every conflict, including the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, World War I & II, the Vietnam War, and the Gulf War.  The cemetery contains 1,431 interments prior to 1900, and thousands since then.

The database was developed by Larry DeJanvier, Superintendent of Cemetery Operations, and includes the individual’s full name, birth and death date, age, sex, place of death, and exact cemetery location.

More information about the history of Mission City Memorial Park and some of the pioneers buried there can be found in the book Cemeteries of Santa Clara, by Bea Lichtenstein, Arcadia Publishing, Images of America, c2005 (Santa Clara City Library call # 929.5 L69). See also the Santa Clara City 2002 Sesquicentennial brochure, A Glimpse of Santa Clara History: Mission City Memorial Park (PDF).