The Highland Park Cemetery will expand, according to an ordinance that passed on first reading at the Casper City Council on Tuesday.

The city is requesting the plat to create the Highland Park Cemetery Addition No. 2 to clarify the legal descriptions of about 29,450 burial plots and to incorporate previously unplatted property at the south end of the cemetery, according to a memo to City Manager Carter Napier from the city's Community Development Director Liz Becher.

The land area is about 73 acres.

State law also requires cemeteries to be formally platted as subdivisions.

The cemetery land is generally east of South Conwell Street and between East Fourth and East 12th streets.

Two years ago, nine acres of the south end of the property were under consideration for a Veterans Administration skilled nursing facility, but the Legislature decided to put the facility in Buffalo.

As a subdivision, it will set the locations of the burial plots.

It also has names for streets that refer to the municipalities in Wyoming.

For example, the cemetery street that parallels South Conwell Street will be known as Bairoil Drive.

Other proposed street names are Granger Way, Greybull Way, Baggs Lane, Meeteetse Boulevard and Yoder Boulevard.

According to the city's website, then Mayor C.K. Bucknum was saddened by the death of his young wife, bought a quarter section of land east of the then city limits, and donated it to the city in the early 1890s.

Thee remains of those interred at the old cemetery near South McKinley Street and the Old Yellowstone Highway were moved to a hill on the north portion of what is now Highland Park Cemetery.

Bucknam and his family members are buried near the Conwell Street gate.

The second reading for the proposed cemetery expansion will be on Feb. 2

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