Miraflores Park contains at least 80 unmarked graves, latest survey shows

Miraflores Park contains at least 80 unmarked graves, Pensacola Mayor D.C. Reeves announced on Tuesday.

Reeves announced the new total of graves discovered after a second survey of the park. The park is the location of a previously lost 19th-century cemetery that likely contains the bodies of African American community members that used to live there in the 1880s.

Research of historical documents indicates the site of Miraflores Park was used as a burial ground between 1884 to 1887.

The existence of the graves, combined with the historical documents, all but confirms that early 20th-century city officials intentionally removed any markers at the cemetery without exhuming and relocating those buried there.

The rediscovery of the cemetery happened when a troop of Boy Scouts cleaning the basement of the Boy Scout building in the park found skeletal remains in the dirt floor of the basement in 2021.

UWF biological anthropologists determined the bones belonged to two individuals, likely a woman in her late 30s or early 40s and a man in his 40s.

A previous survey of the park with ground-penetrating radar found 45 unmarked graves, but the survey indicated there were more outside of what historic documents indicated as the likely graveyard. The city conducted a second survey in an expanded area and found an additional 35 unmarked graves.

Reeves said more information on the survey results will be presented to the Miraflores Burial Ground Study Community Advisory Group. The group will make a recommendation on how the city should memorialize the existence of the unmarked cemetery in the city park.

The advisory group will meet at 10 a.m. Friday at City Hall.

This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Miraflores Park contains 80 unmarked graves