Yuma Neighbors United launches cleanup effort at Pioneer Cemetery

A new volunteer effort is aiming to keep Pioneer Cemetery from fading into neglect. Yuma Neighbors United says it will clean, restore and maintain the burial ground, also known as Yuma City Cemetery and Old Yuma Cemetery, so the people who helped establish Yuma are remembered with dignity.

The first official cleanup is set for Saturday at 6:30 a.m., and more cleanups are expected later this year through the fall. City of Yuma staff already supplied cleaning equipment, signaling that the effort is more than a private hobby project and part of a broader push to care for one of the community’s most meaningful historic sites.

Founders Allan Marx and Cheri Marx have framed the work as both preservation and service. The group is starting with the basics of trimming, clearing and reclaiming a space tied to Yuma’s earliest roots, while also making it easier for descendants to visit gravesites that have deep family meaning. A genealogy database lists 7,655 burial records for Pioneer Cemetery, underscoring how many local families have ties to the ground the volunteers are trying to protect.

The stakes go beyond appearance. Arizona’s State Historic Preservation Office defines a historic cemetery as one that is at least 50 years old and may be documented for its condition, markers and number of burials. In Yuma’s case, the Arizona Memory Project shows that historic cemetery inventory forms were once completed by volunteers with the Pioneer Cemetery Association as part of an Arizona Statehood Centennial Project, evidence that organized preservation work at the site has a long history of its own.

That history is even older than the cemetery itself. According to the Arizona Memory Project, Yuma was founded in 1854 as Colorado City and renamed Arizona in 1858, giving added weight to any effort that keeps the city’s oldest burial ground visible and cared for. The City of Yuma says its historic preservation staff works with the Design and Historic Review Commission to protect the city’s historic and architectural integrity, including historic districts such as Main Street, Century Heights and Brinley Avenue.

For Yuma Neighbors United, Pioneer Cemetery is not just a patch of old ground. It is a public record of who built the city and a test of whether the community will preserve that memory before time and neglect make the loss permanent.