PHOTOS | An excursion to the Ferndale cemetery

Rene Sauer takes her little brother Thomas Bono for a four-wheel push through a grassy path area of the historic Ferndale Cemetery earlier this week. Sauer said she comes out daily, mostly with the stroller and her little brother "for the exercise." The historic Ferndale cemetery was established in 1868, one of the State of California's oldest cemeteries. The cemetery is laid out at the base of a rhododendron-covered hillside leading up to a mixed soft and hardwood forest. A few Confederate and Union soldiers who moved to the Eel River Valley after the Civil War are buried at the Ferndale Cemetery as well as generations of Ferndale families and community members. (Jose Quezada, HUMEDIA/For the Times-Standard)

The old Ferndale Methodist Church (now the Old Steeple music concert and wedding venue) sits beside the historic Ferndale Cemetery, established in 1868. In the foreground is the Berding stone cemetery tower. The church sits on Berding Street in Ferndale. (Jose Quezada, HUMEDIA/For the Times-Standard)

Lois M Lentz and Leonard L. Lentz are remembered with an arrangement of striking color against a backdrop of cement and stone burial plots. (Jose Quezada, HUMEDIA/For the Times-Standard)

The main section of the lower portion of the Ferndale Cemetery serves as background for the Stuart Miles Steele burial plot at the edge of a grassy knoll. Robert Albyn Charlton has his name whittled into a wooden cross. (Jose Quezada, HUMEDIA/For the Times-Standard)