Anaheim Cemetery

It’s simply the right thing to do, the right gesture. It builds incredible good will [for] the men and women who served from Orange County, and if they choose to at a future date, they can have their final resting place in Orange County.”...

Orange County Cemetery District.The 283-acre parcel, called Mountain Park, sits near the 91 Freeway and 241 Toll Road interchange in east Anaheim. It was a gift to the county in 2014 from Irvine Co. magnate Don Bren, who opted not to develop it, and has been preserved as open space.The move isn’t intended to supersede Irvine’s plans for a veterans cemetery, but would meet the cemetery district’s general need for more grave space and could be a backup for veterans if other options fall through, Supervisor Todd Spitzer said.The gift is on condition that the land be developed as a cemetery within 10 years and that at least 50 percent of the space be reserved for military veterans. Cemetery district General Manager Tim Deutsch told supervisors the district also needs room to expand because much of the space for caskets at its three cemeteries is full.Two sites Irvine is considering are on land that was a part of the former Marine Corps Air Station El Toro, but the city is in the midst of studying the potential costs and logistics of the sites and some doubt it will come to fruition.“If they can’t be buried at El Toro, they deserve to be buried in Orange County,” Spitzer said.There are federally affiliated veterans cemeteries in Riverside and Los Angeles, but some Orange County veterans say they’d like to be buried closer to home.With the Irvine options uncertain, veterans are dying and “have no place to go,” Vietnam veteran Bill Cook told the board. “All we’re asking you is to have our back.”Reached Tuesday by phone, Irvine Mayor Don Wagner said he was unaware that the supervisors were considering the land donation but he’s not perturbed by it.“We’re planning on going forward in Irvine,” Wagner said, and if the county wants to designate land for a cemetery also, “That’s entirely their business.”Irvine’s planning commission will discuss possible cemetery sites at a Thursday, Dec. 6, meeting.

The action to transfer the 283-acre Anaheim property, known as Mountain Park, to the Orange County Cemetery District was encouraged by several of the veterans who have been working for decades to establish a cemetery in Orange County for former military service members.“All we’re asking this Board of Supervisors to do today – all we’re asking you – is to have our back. That’s it,” said Nick Berardino, a Vietnam War combat Marine who went on to lead the county government’s largest employees union, in comments to the supervisors before the vote.“We’re dying,” Berardino said of his fellow veterans. “We’re dying. We have no place to go.”The Mountain Park property lies to the east of Anaheim Hills, just east of the 91 and 241 freeway interchange. Under the county’s agreement to transfer the land, which was overseen by Supervisor Todd Spitzer, up to half of the burial space at the property can be reserved for non-veterans, and cemetery district officials would have up to 10 years to conduct the first burial at the site.The map below shows a rough approximation of the Mountain Park location based on planning documents. If the map below does not display properly, please click here to view.The number of potential burial sites at the property was not mentioned in the county agenda documents nor the supervisors’ nearly hour-long discussion Tuesday.It also was unclear how long it would take to build a veterans cemetery at Mountain Park, and how it would be paid for, in comparison with a previously-designated site at the former El Toro base.For the El Toro property, known as the ARDA site, Irvine officials recently said more than than $275 million in city-controlled funds related to the former El Toro base were potentially available to cover the estimated $91 million in costs for the first phase of cemetery development at the former base.The map below shows rough approximations of the Irvine locations based on planning documents. If the map below does not dis...