The ground was still wet Thursday morning as Rockport resident Alan Siddoway walked toward the northwest corner of the Wanship Cemetery.
The National Weather Service had the area under a flash flood warning the day before, since the annual monsoon is bringing more rain than usual to Utah.
The cemetery across from Wanship Dam on state Route 32 saw significant damage.
After checking on his ancestors, Siddoway was headed to the grave of John Frederick, or Dutch John, as the Prussian was known.
“He was buried in the late 1800s — he's up on the hill, which was considered like a pauper's grave because he had no family,” Siddoway said. “So you can see he's not down here with the rest of the headstones from the same era.”
The Kamas Valley History Group calls Dutch John a “strange man” and “mysterious healer” who lived in a cave above the pioneer town of Rockport, now flooded by Rockport Reservoir.
Siddoway said the hermit would craft homeopathic remedies and tend to the townsfolk below. Now, it’s his family’s tradition to tend to John’s grave.
“We'll have to come and fix this,” Siddoway said, surveying the damage.
Rivulets branch and multiply down the hill from Dutch John’s grave. Rainwater had dug trenches through family plots and pushed dirt into the parking lot.
Alex Wetmore, who lives next door, had watched several people come and go all morning to check on their loved ones’ plots Thursday. There were no exposed caskets, but the water appeared to have dislodged headstones and other memorials.
“This is unfortunately something that is not necessarily new,” Wetmore said. “We've seen this kind of damage before from snowmelt in the winter, specifically I remember in 2023.”
A nearby headstone bears the “Faith in Every Footstep” badge, meaning its owner was among the Latter-day Saints who trekked to Utah from Nauvoo, Illinois.
Wanship resident Jacqueline Ball’s ancestors are buried in the cemetery.
She rallied neighbors on social media and drafted a letter to the Summit County Council asking them “to consider installing or improving a drainage system, erosion control measures or other infrastructure that would redirect stormwater away from the gravesites.”
Summit County released a statement saying it is aware of the damage and will work with the Wanship Cemetery Maintenance District to restore the property.
The district's policy leaves each burial site’s management and landscaping to families. It has added rock to shore up the otherwise barren dirt.
Board member Vern Williams said the cemetery doesn’t have water shares — otherwise it could add grass or landscaping.
“[If] this dries out enough in a few days, we'll get a skid loader in here and some more rock,” he said.
The district is staffed entirely by volunteers and collects roughly $20,000 in taxes, plus donations. Except for the Hoytsville cemetery, Wanship’s has the smallest government budget in Summit County.
