Old Catholic Cemeteries In San Diego

Calvary Cemetery

Now Calvary Pioneer Memorial Park

1501 Washington Place    San Diego, CA  92103

    The former Calvary Catholic Cemetery is now part of what is known as Calvary Pioneer Memorial Park in the Mission Hills area of San Diego. It was   primarily in use between 1875 and 1919. Occasional burials continued until the 1960’s.  In the early 1970’s the cemetery was converted to a public park and the gravestones were removed, but the bodies remained. Several of the gravestones were clustered together in the southeast corner of the park as a central memorial. The remainder were removed to Mount Hope Cemetery where several of the better preserved headstones were set up as a second memorial in the southwest corner of that cemetery. The exact number of people buried at Calvary Cemetery is not known because most records were destroyed during a fire in the caretaker’s building during the 1930’s. 

St. Therese of Carmel Cemetery

On the South Side of St. Therese of Carmel Parish

4355 Del Mar Trails Road   San Diego, CA  92130

    The cemetery is located on the south side of the Church between highway 56 and the Church.  In 1894 Mother Mary Michael Cummings donated the   cemetery and the adjacent 10 acres to Most Rev. George Montgomery, Bishop of Los Angeles.  In 1937, Most Rev. Charles Buddy, Bishop of San Diego obtained the property from the Los Angeles Diocese.  The cemetery has 83 recorded burials according to records kept at St James Catholic Church in Solana Beach.  The land is owned by the Catholic Diocese of San Diego.