City of Pensacola officials are encouraged by initial findings from a Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) survey this week that shows signs of unmarked graves at Miraflores Park.
“We finished up yesterday (Wednesday), and we, ended up finding multiple lines of evidence suggesting there are unmarked historic burials in the park,” said Adrianne Walker, historic preservation planner for the City of Pensacola.
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The examination of the site, funded with a $22,000 grant from the National Park Service, began Monday with a historic Human Remains Detection Dog survey.
“We had a great team of professionals out with two different canines who surveyed the project, area, or the park, area. And they did identify a few areas of interest that were later corroborated by the ground penetrating radar,” Walker said.
While real-time data produced during the GPR survey showed evidence of burials, Walker explained that the true extent of the findings won’t be known until the data is put into a computer program for processing and analysis.
“Now that our contractor, Terra Explorations, has wrapped up, the next step for them will be doing that processing and data analysis,” she added. “Then they will provide a final report to the city in about 30 to 45 days. And that will include all of the data, their interpretation of it, and some recommendations for moving forward.”
This exploration of a possible historic cemetery at Miraflores Park was sparked by the June 2021 discovery of human remains in the crawl space under the old Boy Scouts’ building during a cleanup at the site.
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According to Walker, the proper authorities were called and a full on-site investigation was launched, firstly, to determine if the remains were modern or historic.
“Once they were determined to be historic or 75 years or older, the biological anthropologists at the University of West Florida conducted a full study of the skeletal remains,” she said. “And that's how we were able to determine that there were two individuals present.”
Additionally, Walker has been at the forefront of extensive historical research, which has included the discovery of an 1884 map that provides “compelling evidence” that Miraflores Park was once the site of a burial ground.
“The Board of Public Works was still talking about this cemetery in 1906,” she said, suggesting that it may have been used for quite some time.
“So, all of this evidence kind of put together has gotten us to this point of having the ground penetrating radar survey done, which we can then combine with all of this archival research, which is still ongoing. We're still looking into the records. There's a lot of legal records regarding this area, and, we're still looking through all of those, trying to understand everything we can about this resource before we jump to any conclusions.”
Pensacola Mayor D.C. Reeves established the Miraflores Burial Ground Study Community Advisory Group earlier this year to engage with the community, determine how to reinter the human remains found there and to develop a plan for interpreting and commemorating the burial site.
The GPR survey completed this week was conducted over about half of Miraflores Park, based on where the burial ground was projected on the 1884 map.
Walker says the final report will be presented to the city within the next month or so, with a deep dive into the findings to be conducted by the community advisory group, which is slated to hold its next meeting after the first of the year.
“We're in just a bit of a holding pattern until we get those survey results,” said Walker. “And once we have those, that'll help us to figure out next steps.”
