Reno’s first residents’ bodies to be exhumed for development

RENO — A number of longtime Reno families are upset as the city’s oldest cemetery has announced plans to exhume and move more than 800 of the oldest bodies in the property.

The owner of Hillside Cemetery has posted plans to disinter the bodies to clear the land for potential development, though no specific development proposals have been made public.

The announcement drew immediate outcry as the cemetery dates back to the 1800s and holds the remains of Reno’s founders. Its last grave was dug in 1959.

Any proposed development will have difficulty getting the land as the families own the plots themselves. The cemetery owns only the space in between plots. However, many of the deeds to those plots have not been updated in more than 100 years.