ELKRIDGE, Md. — If you blinked, you might miss the rock wall, which separates the Rosa Bonheur Pet Cemetery from the seemingly endless traffic on Route 1 in Elkridge, but beyond that wall lies decades of Maryland history.
“This cemetery is so fascinating in fact that William Shaffer, the previous governor of Maryland, buried his dog, Willie II, here,” said Candy Warren, president of the Rosa Bonheur Society, “We have a World War II veteran Doberman who was promoted to corporal, because he saved so many American soldiers.”
With available land for development so scarce along the corridor, it was only a matter of time before someone would want a piece of the cemetery, this time, for a Sheetz convenience store, complete with gas pumps and a car wash.
WATCH: Setback to proposed development in pet cemetery
The only thing lying in their way?
Nearly a century’s worth of pet graves and, in some instances, their owners’ plots.
“In the front, there are two thousand burials just in the area that the Corridor Square LLC wishes to develop,” said Warren.
Even though Howard County’s Planning Board rejected a bid to have a portion of the parcel rezoned for the project, opponents aren’t celebrating just yet.
Developers could still take it to the zoning board, but something that happened in the cemetery a few years ago could certainly come back to haunt them.
An apparent effort by someone to clear out headstones and to mass human and animal remains in an unmarked grave.
“One of the interesting things that the planning board said was that the owner of this cemetery, which is Memorial LLC, not Mark Levy who only has a contract to buy it, but the owner of this cemetery is responsible for the disinterment of all these bodies, which was probably done illegally,” said Maryland Cemetery Oversight Advisor Council Member David Zinner.
It’s a bitter footnote in the storied history of a cemetery some would pave over if they get their way.
“The one thing that I felt when I first came here, although the grass was six feet high, you could feel the love and the respect that was here,” said Warren, “All life is precious.”
