Oil Field Cemetery

When Ely May (not her real name) went to visit her granny’s grave, something she did about every 2 or 3 years, she got quite a shock. Instead of a peaceful cemetery, she found two producing oil wells.

- Lee Aronson

One of the derricks was about 40 feet from Granny’s grave and one of the storage tanks was only about 10 feet from the grave. There was mud and slush everywhere. Well, not everywhere: it didn’t actually cover any of the graves, but visitors had to trek through it to get to the graves.

In addition to the mud and slush, although Granny’s grave was not physically disturbed, other graves were. A marble slab, once used to mark the grave of a child, was placed at the door of the oil company’s office trailer and used as a step.

Elly May was pretty upset, and she ended up suing the oil company that was doing the drilling. But the oil company showed the Jury that it had permission to drill. In fact, the owner of the cemetery and the oil company had signed a lease that actually gave the oil company permission to “disturb the dead” and “remove dead bodies.”