Vicksburg’s only municipal burial ground is growing again, with city crews clearing and leveling land extending west across a shallow ravine from the existing 115 acres.

Work on the old horse pasture is being done as time permits, said Walter Bliss, head of Vicksburg’s Street Department.

“It’ll be about 8 to 10 acres,” Bliss said. “I’ve pretty much cleared everything I’m going to clear.”

Establishing drainage and allowing the land to settle and stabilize will be an on-again, off-again project that could last up to a year “if I can get out here as much as I’d like to,” Bliss said.

Cedar Hill Cemetery was established at least 170 years ago on what had been farmland well north of the city. Today, Mission 66 terminates at one of several entrances to the graveyard where the “population” far exceeds that of the city and county. There have been numerous expansions, most recently north toward a Vicksburg National Military Park boundary.

Gertrude Young, who was North Ward alderman when the most recent expansion land was purchased, said she believed the city paid owners of A.J. Martin Marble Works less than $100,000 for it.

When the 8 to 10 acres is finished, it will be surveyed for plots of various sizes to be sold to individuals and families. The city also collects a maintenance fee to work on roads. Mowing is done by contract and a city crew charges fees for opening and closing graves.

Bliss said the expansion will salve capacity troubles for maybe 20 years.

But, again, there’s no real rush being applied. City crews undertake the project when not occupied with more urgent tasks.

“I’ve still got to maintain Vicksburg,” he said. “I can’t come out here and do it everyday, but as I get caught up in some of my other work I like to come out.”

Bliss said the hull of an old barn is still standing west of the cleared earth. Deer from the woods “are a little spooked these days, but they come by at night,” Bliss said. “They’re coming from the military park, which is a haven for deer.”

Robert and Elizabeth King visited Cedar Hill Cemetery Thursday morning to change flowers on the graves of kin and loved ones. It was appropriately sunny and warm, as they had come to replace holiday poinsettias with “spring flowers.”

Their forebears for generations back found rest in this loess soil.

“My whole family’s buried right here,” Robert King said.

“It’s such a peaceful place, and it’s so interesting,” said Elizabeth King, who is of the Piazza family.

“When you stop to think of all the history out here, of all the people that were settlers of Vicksburg … The nuns are all buried here, all the Confederate soldiers. There’s so much history out here, so many different vocations and so many different lifestyles.”