Following the recent success of the clean up of the Talburt Cemetery in Mountain Home, the Sheriff's Office Tuesday morning used four Baxter County Jail Inmates and various equipment to clean up the "New Buzzard Roost - Tracy Cemetery" located on Baxter CR 139 near the Hand Cove area.  Inmates, supervised by two Sheriff's Deputies, spent about three hours weed eating, mowing, and cleaning up this cemetery.

     The "New Buzzard Roost-Tracy Cemetery" was created in 1943 on U. S. Army Corp of Engineers property when the Corp relocated the Old Tracy and Old Buzzard Roost cemeteries to this location during the construction of the Norfork dam.  In recent years, the relatively small, relocated cemetery had received little upkeep or maintenance and had become very overgrown and difficult to locate unless you knew exactly where to look for it.  There are currently only two intact grave markers standing, with several others broken and propped against a tree at the edge of the cemetery boundary.  There are known to be about 40 grave sites here with names and information recorded in Corp of Engineers official records compiled during the relocation project survey. 

     The Sheriff's Office is gratified that it now has the resources to be able to use county jail inmate labor to clean up and preserve some of these abandoned cemeteries for future generations, as well as using them for other beneficial public projects. 

/s/ John F. Montgomery,
Baxter County Sheriff