The Fair Oaks Cemetery District Board of Trustees will be dedicating the newly constructed Patriotic Court of Honor at the 9th annual Memorial Day Event on Saturday May 26, 2007 at 10:00 am. 

We will be honoring POW/MIA veterans.  We have contacted a gentleman who has designed a car in honor of those vets that will be on display for the Memorial Day Service.

The Niche walls constructed total 580 medium niches.  Each niche will accommodate two cremation inurnments.  The development also includes pre-bury of 440 double depth full body burial vaults. 

Design of the Patriotic Court of Honor has a center piece of black granite with each name of a veteran interred in the Fair Oaks Cemetery inscribed on it.  It is the focus of the Patriotic Court of Honor.

District widens its boundaries to accommodate more residents.

By Lakiesha McGhee -- Bee Staff Writer
Published 2:15 am PDT Sunday, May 1, 2005

The Fair Oaks Cemetery was founded Oct. 21, 1902, on 2.5 acres marked by gently sloping hills and oak trees.

The parklike setting - at Olive Street and New York Avenue - now covers 13 acres, and cemetery officials perform about 200 burials there each year.

But until recently, not all Fair Oaks residents could be buried there. Official action has changed that.

The Sacramento Local Agency Formation Commission last month approved a boundary adjustment for the Fair Oaks Cemetery District to incorporate Fair Oaks residents north of Madison Avenue in the 95628 zip code. Before the boundary adjustment, the Sylvan Cemetery District in Citrus Heights served those homes.

Under the arrangement, part of the Fair Oaks district in Carmichael will be added to the Sylvan district.

"We were getting a lot of requests from residents who weren't in the district but who wanted to be buried at the cemetery," district manager Ray Young said.

He said it was difficult to explain that although the district served a greater population than Fair Oaks, not all Fair Oaks residents were in the district.

The Fair Oaks and Sylvan cemetery districts started the process to adjust their boundaries two years ago, Young said. An engineering firm was hired, and a proposal was submitted to LAFCO in June 2004, according to a news release.

The LAFCO process included a 60-day public comment period, during which no one protested. The new boundaries became official April 3. The process cost the two districts $33,500, Young said.

The new boundaries affect about 1,100 acres and 18,000 residents. The Fair Oaks Cemetery District serves Fair Oaks and parts of Carmichael, Rancho Cordova and unincorporated Sacramento County.

The district is bounded on the south by White Rock Road, on the west by Howe Avenue, by Natomas Lake to the east and by Madison Avenue to the north, except where the boundary adjustments added land north of Madison Avenue between Dewey Drive and San Juan Avenue and between Fair Oaks Boulevard and Main Avenue.

Young said the district's cemetery and burial services typically cost half of what private cemeteries charge. Two of the earliest burials at the cemetery were of Lillian Maude Shelton and Nellie Williams, who both died in 1898, before the cemetery was part of an official district, according to the district's Web site. The first official burial was that of Sarah Vail in 1903. The Fair Oaks cemetery also is the final resting place for many war veterans, including about a dozen who served in the Civil War.

"There is a strong sense of community identity in Fair Oaks," Young said. "Many people who have resided in Fair Oaks their entire lives want to be buried here. Now, that option is available to them."