Sunday, May 24, 2026

A Cemetery the Eaton Fire Failed to Destroy Will Honor Its Civil War Dead

Memorial Day Commemoration attendee Sylvia Cruz poses with members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans in an archival photo. [Courtesy photo]

On Monday, the Pasadena Civil War Round Table revives an old Decoration Day tradition among the graves of hundreds of Union and Confederate soldiers buried in Altadena

On a green rise below the San Gabriel Mountains that the Eaton Fire threatened to destroy but was stopped by firefighters and cemetery staff, more than 600 Civil War soldiers — Union and Confederate — lie in the same Altadena ground. On Monday afternoon, visitors will walk among their graves.

The Pasadena Civil War Round Table will hold its annual Memorial Day ceremony at 2 p.m. Monday, May 25, at Mountain View Cemetery, 2400 N. Fair Oaks Ave. The event is free and open to the public, and centers on walking tours led by the group’s president, Nick Smith, who tells the stories of individual soldiers buried there.

The Round Table has held the ceremony for many years, according to its announcement, and this year it falls as the United States marks 250 years since the Declaration of Independence.

The cemetery itself nearly did not survive to host it. Established in 1882, the roughly 60-acre grounds came through the January 2025 Eaton Fire, which destroyed much of the surrounding neighborhood. Cemetery officials have said the property lost only a few maintenance structures and sustained smoke and soot damage, and some Altadena residents have credited the large green expanse with slowing the fire’s spread.

The site holds graves from every American conflict from the Mexican-American War forward, including two Civil War Medal of Honor recipients, the Round Table said. Its Civil War section holds what the group describes as more than 600 veterans, “blue and gray”; figures cited in earlier coverage of the cemetery have run somewhat higher. Among those buried at Mountain View are Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman, author Octavia Butler and actor George Reeves.

The ceremony revives a Pasadena tradition once known as Decoration Day. From the 1890s to the 1940s, Smith has said, residents attended a memorial church service downtown, then rode the trolley up Fair Oaks Avenue to hold observances at the cemetery’s Civil War grave sites at about 2 p.m. — the same hour the Round Table’s ceremony begins.

“It’s not a matter of relating it to the 250th so much as to show that the Civil War is still not forgotten, and is still a major shaping factor in the nation that has grown during those 250 years,” Smith wrote in response to questions about the event.

The graves are not only those of soldiers, Smith noted. Civil War nurses, chaplains and others are buried at Mountain View, as is a daughter of the abolitionist John Brown. Janet Whaley, a board member of the Round Table, said the group’s members include people with Civil War ancestors on both sides, and that the commemoration “provides a tangible way to honor their service, whether it be North or South.” In past years the ceremony has drawn heritage organizations including the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War and the United Daughters of the Confederacy.

The ceremony begins promptly at 2 p.m. Monday at Mountain View Cemetery, 2400 N. Fair Oaks Ave., Altadena. The event is free, and the Round Table says all ages are welcome. More information is available from the group at PasadenaCWRT@gmail.com.

“It’s not a large event,” Smith wrote, “but it’s a way of keeping history alive.”