Park Service razes cemetery fence

Barrier around graveyard built on U.S. land, official says

Members of the Shaddox Cemetery Association are upset after the National Park Service removed a fence at the cemetery that had been at the center of a property rights dispute since 2007. The cemetery is on private property surrounded by federal land within the Buffalo National River area.
Members of the Shaddox Cemetery Association are upset after the National Park Service removed a fence at the cemetery that had been at the center of a property rights dispute since 2007. The cemetery is on private property surrounded by federal land within the Buffalo National River area.

The National Park Service has removed a fence built ostensibly to keep elk out of Shaddox Cemetery.

photo

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

A map showing the location of Shaddox Cemetery.

Since 2007, the fence had been at the center of a property rights battle between the federal government and the Shaddox family, which settled in Newton County before the Civil War and still uses the cemetery for burials.

The cemetery is on private property surrounded by federal land within the Buffalo National River area, which has been a national park since 1972. The cemetery is about 1,000 feet east of Pruitt as the crow flies and 14 miles south of Harrison. It's one of about 40 cemeteries in the national park, some of which are privately owned.

The fence built in 2009 around Shaddox Cemetery enclosed a total of about two-tenths of an acre of federal land along with the 2.57-acre private cemetery property.

The $14,000 fence was constructed primarily on federal land, said Kevin Cheri, superintendent of the Buffalo National River. Most of the fence -- about 1,150 linear feet -- was removed Monday, he said.

Cheri said the fence was several feet outside the cemetery property line in some sections.

He said the initial bulldozer work for the fence, which was done in 2007, disrupted a prehistoric archaeological site. "We got drawn into this because they disturbed our land," Cheri said. "They broke the law."

Cheri said he tried to give the cemetery association an easy way out. He offered to pay for a new fence to be installed on the private cemetery property, but the family rejected that offer.

Instead, the cemetery association wanted to do a land swap: some of their property on a slope for the federal land within their fence. In the trade, the cemetery association would give twice as much acreage as it received.

But such a trade of federal land isn't a simple matter. The government has rules. To acquire the land, $127,000 would have to be spent for land surveys, archaeological surveys and other procedures that are required by the federal government, and the cemetery association would have to pay that cost, said Cheri.

"I don't have the authority to give away land," Cheri said. Of the cemetery association members, he said: "They don't think any of this is necessary. They think the secretary of the interior can just sign a document and give the land to them."

Cheri said three letters were sent to Melvin Shaddox, president of the cemetery association, warning that the fence would have to come down, but Shaddox never responded. The last of those three letters was sent May 18.

The fence removal sparked a scathing news release Wednesday from Secure Arkansas, a conservative organization that became involved in the land dispute in 2014.

"The Shaddox Cemetery Association board members and local people are stunned into disbelief that such unwarranted demolition of their private property could occur in such a destructive, arrogant spirit by the agents of our own federal government," according to the release sent Wednesday from Secure Arkansas.

Jeannie Burlsworth, founder of Secure Arkansas, said more information would come out soon showing the cemetery association is in the right. She is busy researching the topic, she said.

"There are some conflicting things that we need to have further investigation on," Burlsworth said Thursday. "This should have been a minor issue, a minor boundary adjustment."

Burlsworth said the cemetery association had surveys done of the property before building the fence.

Members of the Shaddox family didn't respond to an email message sent Thursday.

Cheri said the National Park Service has been trying to work with the cemetery association and the state's congressional delegation to rectify the situation since 2010. Legislation was being considered.

But the cemetery association told the delegation that it would prefer an administrative fix, citing concerns about the cost and the possibility that the legislation could be amended later.

According to the news release from Secure Arkansas, "The Shaddox board members say they DO NOT want a federally-financed fence on their property because of the leverage it would give NPS for future intrusion, access question and control of their cemetery. In other words, if the NPS builds the fence, the Shaddox Cemetery could lose the land to the National Park Service."

According to the news release, Arlis Jones, a member of the cemetery board, found a herd of nine elk in the cemetery in 2007. Some of them were on the grave of his mother, Ava Shaddox Jones.

"Mr. Jones said that due to the freshness of her grave and the springtime rainy weather, some of the elk had pawed almost knee deep on her grave," according to the release. "And at other times, elk left their tracks behind after they had pawed the ground and toppled headstones."

That prompted construction of the fence, which protected the cemetery until Monday, according to the release.

Cheri said there has never been evidence of elk in the vicinity of the cemetery. He said the fence wouldn't have stopped an elk anyway.

"A deer or elk could jump over it easily," he said. "It wasn't an elk-proof fence."

Cheri said he's still open to the idea of working with the cemetery association on the issue.

"We regret we couldn't come to some other resolution, but the fact of the matter is we still wish to cooperate with them and help them," Cheri said. "We still want to work with them, but they've got to come talk to us.

"They've closed that door. My door is open."

Metro on 09/16/2016

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