Downtown Phoenix: A Cemetery Covered in Concrete?

Nadine Economos
Jul 28, 2025
2 min read

If you’ve ever walked through downtown Phoenix and felt a chill that couldn’t be blamed on the A/C blasting from a nearby bar, you’re not alone. There’s something beneath the surface of this city—literally.

Because here’s the thing most people don’t know: downtown Phoenix is built on top of a cemetery. And no, not next to a cemetery. Not near one. On top of one.

The Forgotten Dead Beneath Downtown

Back in the 1870s, Phoenix was still a dusty little frontier outpost, and like any good town trying to look official, it needed a cemetery.

So they created one. It was called Pioneer Cemetery, since it held many of Phoenix’s earliest settlers. It sat near what’s now 13th to 15th Avenue and Jefferson—aka right around the State Capitol.

This was where tuberculosis victims, railroad workers, drifters, children, immigrants, and pioneers were laid to rest. Some were buried in marked graves, many were not.

By the 1890s, the city decided this little patch of land was too valuable to waste on the dead. Cemeteries were seen as unsanitary. And, let’s be honest, developers had big plans. So the city started relocating the graves to the newly established Greenwood Cemetery in 1906.

But here's where it gets dark: they didn’t move everyone.

We Moved the Headstones… Not the Bodies

Wealthy families could afford to pay for their loved ones to be exhumed and relocated. Everyone else? Well... they got left behind.

Hundreds of bodies—many unnamed, unclaimed, or inconvenient—were never moved. And while the city claimed otherwise for decades, the bones had other plans.

Construction crews digging around the Capitol, MCSO headquarters, and even Fry’s Downtown have all unearthed human remains. These weren’t modern crime scenes. These were forgotten burials—some from the 1800s, others far older.

That’s right: even Indigenous graves, including Hohokam remains, have been discovered under sidewalks and buildings.

And it wasn’t just graves. During the construction of what is now the Footprint Center (formerly America West Arena), workers uncovered brick tunnels, opium pipes, and gambling artifacts—remnants of Phoenix’s first Chinatown, a once-thriving community that was later pushed out and quite literally buried beneath downtown.

The Spirits Don’t Forget

Disturbing the dead has consequences. Ask any ghost tour guide, construction worker, or night-shift security guard downtown.

We’ve had guests on our tours report seeing figures in windows that don’t exist, getting touched when no one’s near them, and hearing names whispered through ghost-hunting devices—names we later confirmed were buried in that area.

There’s a reason we say Phoenix didn’t just bury its dead—it buried its history.