YEAR BUILT: c. 1898

HISTORY
Guadalupe Cemetery occupies five acres of land in Tempe where the original Yaqui settlement of Guadalupe was located. Despite the settlement’s relocation to the area that is now the Town of Guadalupe, Guadalupe Cemetery has been continuously used by the town’s Yaqui and Hispanic community.

The Yaqui are originally from southern Sonora, Mexico but many migrated to Arizona in the last quarter of the nineteenth to join family and escape genocide in Mexico. In the 1880s, Yaqui families started to move further north into the Salt River Valley for employment opportunities with irrigation companies. Others sought jobs with the farmers and ranchers that were benefitting from the expanding irrigation networks.

In 1898, Tempe homesteader Sylvester Roche transferred five acres of his land to the Catholic Church. This land happened to be located at the center of an ancient village that was once occupied by the ancestral people known as the Huhugam (Hohokam). The site was named La Ciudad de los Hornos by archaeologists, it covered 450 acres and was connected to the Salt River via irrigation ditches. At the time of the cemetery’s establishment a Huhugam platform mound was still visible adjacent to the cemetery’s northeast corner.

After acquiring the land, the Catholic Church started to encourage the Yaqui to settle on these five acres of land. The Yaqui who started living on this land named their new settlement “Guadalupe” in honor of La Virgen de Guadalupe, the patron saint of Mexico.

Sometime before 1909, the Yaqui people built a simple adobe church building around which they built their houses and shade structures (ramadas). The church served a center for the Yaqui to perform traditional religious rites, such as Matachine dances. These religious rites typically happened in or around the church building.

Many of the Yaqui who lived in Guadalupe secured employment with the Salt River Water Users’ Association. As early as 1907, the Yaqui made up an important component of the association’s irrigation canal construction and maintenance labor force. The Yaqui’s work with the association continued until the 1950s, when machinery started to replace manual labor in the ditches.

By 1910, the Yaqui community had expanded beyond the original five acres of land they were granted. This caused their claim to come into question as an increasing number of farmers and land speculators sought to stake a claim in anticipation of the Roosevelt Dam’s completion. Once the Roosevelt Dam was completed, the land the Yaqui lived on would benefit from a steady flow of irrigation water, increasing its value and productivity, therefore making it desirable for farmers and investors.

In the end, the Yaqui relocated to donated land a mile and a half to the southwest, adjacent to the northeastern edge of South Mountain and near where the Yaqui conducted annual Santa Cruz ceremonies. The community, however, continued to use the church and cemetery at the original site, which remained under the ownership of the Roman Catholic Church’s Diocese of Phoenix.

In 1979, the Diocese of Phoenix quit-claimed the property with the church and cemetery to the Town of Guadalupe. By this time, however, a new church had been constructed, in 1916, in the Town of Guadalupe, and the old one had fallen out of use. Despite the church’s disuse, the cemetery continues to be used by the Guadalupe community today.

ARCHITECTURE
The Guadalupe Cemetery occupies five acres in west-central Tempe a half mile southeast of where Interstate 10 and US-60 intersect. When the Yaqui originally settled on the land, they were surrounded by agricultural fields and vacant desert land. Currently, the cemetery is surrounded by a mobile home park on the west side and single-family homes on the north, south, and east sides.

The cemetery consists of hundreds of gravesites scattered across the site in varied densities and orientations. Most of the graves have grave mounds and are marked with large, wooden, white-painted crosses. However, not all graves are marked the same way. Some crosses are made of carved wood, metal, or concrete and some are even marked with marble or concrete headstones. Additionally, some are bounded by concrete, masonry, or wooden borders.

Sometimes gravesites have been grouped together, such as areas with family members, by surrounding them with post-and-chain barriers, wooden or metal picket fences, or fences made of other materials. Some graves have concrete statues, flag poles, and other ornamentation. There are some unmarked graves that are only visible due to their grace mounds.  In keeping with Yaqui tradition, personal items and candles are placed at many of the graves.

The cemetery’s landscaping is that of an unirrigated desert. It has scattered vegetation consisting of large tamarisk trees and small mesquite trees. Near the center of the site is a non-contributing tile-roofed masonry and metal post shade structure that is used for funerals and Dia de los Muertos (aka, Day of the Dead) ceremonies. Vehicle accessways and walking paths are made of natural sand and gravel. A small, paved parking lot is located at the site’s southwest corner.

The cemetery is surrounded on three sides by a CMU block wall. The wall is decorated with painted murals in various locations. The west side is marked not by a CMU block wall, but by a chain link fence. The west side of the south wall has a metal gate that provides access to the cemetery and its parking lot.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
National Register of Historic Places Nomination, Guadalupe Cemetery. 2022.