Des Moines,IA : City to revamp historic gravesite to prevent future crashes on June, Thursday 15th 2017

Authorities are searching for the hit-and-run driver who destroyed parts of a historic family burial site that sits in the middle of a West Des Moines roundabout.

The 170-year-old graveyard, Huston Cemetery, is situated in the middle of the intersection at South 88th Street and Mills Civic Parkway.

The driver abandoned the car, which damaged the fence, landscaping and some headstones before coming to rest.

Investigators are looking into the registered owner of the vehicle, said West Des Moines police Sgt. Anthony Giampolo said. The driver will likely face traffic-related charges.

Though the cemetery is small, it has historic significance. Huston Cemetery is named for James B. Huston, patriarch of one of the first families to settle in Dallas County in the 1840s.

The city website says the first two people buried there were former slave girls with the last name of Harper who "died on their way to freedom."

Clyde Evans, West Des Moines director of community and economic development, said this isn’t the first time the cemetery has been hit.

“We had somebody that was intoxicated, went through the cemetery, hit the pine tree, so we decided to try to secure the cemetery the best we could,” Evans said. “That’s why we put up the chain-link fencing.”

As the burial plot sits, the development around it has been growing rapidly. A steady flow of traffic passes through the single-lane roundabout daily.

The once-rural site has been overtaken by West Des Moines' expansion. The city now owns the parcel.

City officials said a remodel of the intersection is needed, to move traffic rather than the site. Future plans have the cemetery on the southwest corner of the intersection, with roads being reconstructed to the east and north of it, which would make it no longer a cemetery in a traffic circle.

Construction is expected to start in the next couple of years when developers will reconstruct the metal fence that originally surrounded the graveyard. Until then, the iron link fence will go back up.

Although the roads around gravesite may be changing, the history inside it is here to stay.



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City to revamp historic gravesite to prevent future crashes