High above the Big Sioux River south of Egan, roughly 1,100 graves hold the remains of loved ones and some strangers to the area.
Until now, it’s been sometimes difficult for visitors to find the plots where their ancestors or friends are buried. Thanks to a group of volunteers, the Hillside Cemetery has been mapped and all sites identified on a master map available onsite to visitors.
“It’s so helpful to find the deceased in the cemetery, to locate the gravesites,” said John Hay, who helped with the two-year project. The public cemetery, which isn’t associated with a town or a church, was established in 1885 and is governed as a non-profit organization by the Egan Ladies’ Cemetery and the Egan Men’s Cemetery associations. Egan was established five years earlier, and some of the 70-plus unmarked graves may be people who worked on the railroad and were not local residents, Hay said.
“There’s an area to the very northeast corner that was designated as a potter’s field,” he said.
Several Civil War veterans also are interned at Hillside.

While walking the cemetery to identify graves, Hay and Tom Ehrichs, who is the sexton, were surprised by the number of infants buried there, especially children from the 1910s and 1920s. They worked through the cemetery one block at a time.
Money for maintenance of the grounds is raised through donations and the sale of plots. Work is largely done by volunteers, but the association pays for mowing, for example.
In addition to the mapping project, cemetery supporters have seeded the two-acre entrance with wildflowers and native grasses, removed old trees and fences and marked all lots in the new Burggraff section in the southern area of the cemetery with metal discs.
Near the middle of the cemetery, high on the hill, the directory is encased in a case and covered by a small roof. A flag flies on special occasions.
The directory helps people successfully find what they are looking for, said Warren Jackson, a volunteer. “Before we finished … they would just wander around,” he said of visitors who were unfamiliar with the cemetery or were looking for ancestors.
The directory, which is based on individual names assigned to coordinates that include a plot number, can continually be updated with new burials.
Material and labor for the project came from descendants of family members buried at Hillside, including Hay, Ehrichs, Jackson, Trevor Grohs, Todd Chamley, Rick Luze with Jim Clark Construction, Perry Johnson, Lloyd Gundvaldson and Bill Hay. Data for the directory was based on work started by the late Ron Smith for the Moody County Museum and Historical Society.
The cemetery association has set up an endowment fund with the South Dakota Community Foundation with the goal of raising enough money to pay for permanent maintenance of the property.