PLANO (1080 KRLD) - Part of the history of Plano is being rediscovered through centuries old grave sites.
The city and its historical societies have long suspected there was something more to the city's two oldest cemeteries. The Old City cemetery has been around since the 1800s. The predominately African American Davis cemetery started in 1945.
Above ground, both of the cemeteries look pretty spread out, with handfuls of grave markers here and there. But recently, teams discovered there should be more graves than we see.
The discrepancy was first noticed through some research. Jeff Campbell, director of Plano's Conservancy for Historic Preservation, says there's a list of all the burials in both the Davis and Old City cemeteries, and the number of graves simply didn't add up.
"When you have more people on the list than you have stones, you know there's a chance there's more people," he says.
The conservancy called in a contractor to investigate. Using ground penetrating radar, an estimated 29 unmarked graves were discovered in both cemeteries.
"It's not 100 percent accurate due to depth of burial, soil changes, things like that," says Campbell. "But that's as close as we can get."
While there's nothing left of those who were buried, the radar detected their resting places through changes in the soil.
These graves have been unknown until now simply because they've lost their markers. Some were stolen by vandals, others by weather and time.
"Back in the days of pioneers, some of them didn't have a lot and grave markers were made out of wood or something similar," he says. "Wood wants to rot, stone wants to break down. Anything we make from the earth wants to go back to its natural state."
Vandalism also doesn't appear to be too rampant at Old City and Davis cemeteries. Still, Campbell says we'd be wise to respect cemeteries for what they are- historical sites.
"Dallas, Fort Worth, Plano, none of these cities fell out of the sky," says Campbell. "People buried in the cemeteries, they built these cities. These like are historical parks, and they're a real asset to the community."
Campbell and Plano's Conservancy for Historic Preservation are now relying on Haggard Library to identify the people who were buried there.