25 caskets from 1800s cemetery threaten to fall off cliff into Lake Norman

Graves with human remains buried in a late-1800s cemetery threaten to topple off a 50-foot cliff into Lake Norman at any moment, the president of a waterfront homeowners association warned this week.

Just 50 feet from the water, the burial grounds are believed to hold 20 to 25 caskets, Roger Webb, president of the Beacon Pointe Homeowners Association, told The Charlotte Observer.

Beacon Pointe is on Bullfinch Road, on a peninsula off Fern Hill and Perth roads in Mooresville.

Webb is a retired geologist and said because of land erosion, the graves could inch closer to the water with each passing month or “slump off” all together into the lake without warning.

He bought a lot in the subdivision in the 2000s and has lived there since 2011, he said.

The graveyard is called the Jones-Lambert Cemetery on maps, Webb said, and is tucked in the woods between 234 and 240 Bullfinch Rd.

To Webb’s knowledge, no one has laid flowers at the grave markers since he’s lived there. No one outside Beacon Pointe has been known to even visit the cemetery, he added.

“We believe a distant relative (of people buried in the cemetery) may live on one end of Fern Hill Road,” but no one knows the person, Webb said.

Now completing his term as HOA president, he’s worried about continued erosion.

His board agreed and voted recently to put money in its budget to hire a lawyer to explore “legal alternatives” to prevent the cemetery from sliding down into the lake.

A lawyer, who hasn’t yet been hired, would help determine who owns the cemetery lot, Webb said. But Duke Energy’s land-development arm Crescent Resources deeded the property to the HOA in 2002, Iredell County public records show.

The HOA has paid taxes on the property since 2003, according to Iredell County public tax documents.

Questions a legal researcher could help answer for the HOA, Webb said, could include:

Does the HOA have clear title to the cemetery lot?

Did Crescent have clear title when the company deeded the cemetery to the HOA? If not, who did?

And who owned the lot before Crescent?

Webb also said a church that was never built may have been planned with the cemetery.

Costly rip-rap

The ownership questions are important to who should pay to place riprap, a wall of loose stone or concrete, along the cliff to stop erosion, Webb said.

The work could cost at least $250,000, Webb said the HOA learned from Lyfe Marine Docks, which serves Lake Norman homeowners and said the job was too big and involved for the company.

That’s too steep a price for his community of 49 homes, Webb said.

The HOA intends to ask Duke Energy, which manages the lake under federal license, to help contribute financially to the riprap, Webb said.

They may be out of luck.

“Duke Energy has reviewed public records and found nothing to indicate the company has ownership or responsibility for the parcel or the cemetery,” spokeswoman Caroline Portillo said in an email to the Observer on Friday.

“We will inform the homeowners’ association of this and offer to review any documents they believe contradict our findings,” she said.

Are the remains hazardous?

Would remains in the caskets present an environmental hazard if they fell into the lake?

The Observer asked Catawba Riverkeeper Brandon Jones.

“That is certainly an unusual question!” Jones said in an email. ‘To the best of my knowledge, there is nothing environmentally hazardous in old coffins or bones that would not be normally present in something like a deer or other wildlife carcass.

“While there could be trace amounts of preservative chemicals or heavy metals, they would quickly be diluted,” he said.

“I would assume that the more pressing concerns are legal/ethical, related to ‘decency’ and respect for the dead, but that is outside my expertise,” Jones said.