PIONEER CEMETERIES : These old resting places have a natural ambiance often missing in modern manicured parks.

1. SAN FERNANDO PIONEER MEMORIAL CEMETERY

* Bledsoe Street and Foothill

Boulevard, Sylmar

Originally part of the lands of the nearby San Fernando Mission, the cemetery lost its church affiliation more than 150 years ago. It was passed from owner to owner until 1961, when it was donated to the Native Daughters of the Golden West. Records indicate that burials continued until 1939. The 750 graves include Native Americans, Civil War veterans, children who died in the 1918 worldwide influenza epidemic and victims of the 1928 St. Francis Dam disaster. Tours: (818) 367-7957.

2. SAVANNAH MEMORIAL PARK

* 9263 Valley Blvd., Rosemead

Before the Civil War, many Southern families settled in El Monte, then called Lexington. Next door, on slightly higher ground, stood the community of Savannah. The elevated land made it the choice as the burial site for residents of swampy Lexington. The first known burial was in 1846, five years before most of the settlers arrived. Today the privately owned 5 1/2-acre cemetery, with 200 plots remaining of its original 3,000, is run by the El Monte Cemetery Assn. In the 1920s, when the city began to widen Valley Boulevard, construction crews unearthed dozens of corpses outside the cemetery fence. Most of the skeletons were reburied in a mass grave inside the cemetery, but some had deteriorated so much that workers left them untouched and simply paved over them.

3. SIERRA MADRE CEMETERY

* 553 Sierra Madre Blvd., Sierra Madre

Atop a choice hillside is a cemetery where 12 of Sierra Madre’s 17 original settlers are buried. It was founded in 1884 on the death of Civil War veteran and pioneer John Richardson. The headstones of Confederate soldiers buried here have all been stolen by souvenir hunters or pranksters. All the burial plots at this privately owned 2.3-acre cemetery are filled, and only two granite niches in its mausoleum remain empty.

4. FAIRMOUNT CEMETERY

* 301 N. Baldy Vista Ave., Glendora

Surrounded by a commercial nursery is a tiny, 119-year-old cemetery, begun when settler James Carson Preston donated the two-acre parcel--a former Native American burial site--as a public graveyard. The need arose in 1875 after a German immigrant and woodcutter named Nelson was killed protecting his wood from a thief. Almost 200 other settlers, including potato king J.B. Beardslee, followed Nelson to this graveyard, most under more peaceful circumstances. The Fairmount Cemetery trustees give several tours a year. (818) 335-4440.

5. SPADRA CEMETERY

* 2882 Pomona Blvd., Pomona

Sandwiched between D.H. Trucking Co., railroad tracks and the Orange Freeway sits a 2 1/2-acre cemetery dating to 1868. Rancher Louis Phillips donated the land as a civic graveyard. Early settlers named the community Spadra after their hometown of Spadra Bluff, Ark. In 1971, four years after the last burial, the graveyard was deeded to the Historical Society of Pomona Valley. The cemetery, lined with pepper trees, includes 200 graves. Tours: (909) 623-2198.

6. EL CAMPO SANTO

* 15415 E. Don Julian Road,

City of Industry

In the early 1850s, William Workman, who would become one of the founders of Los Angeles’ first banking house, set aside an acre of land on his vast rancho for a family cemetery. In 1854, his brother, David, was killed during a cattle drive and became the first family member buried there. In 1917, more than 40 years after the family’s bank failed, bankrupting Workman, his grandson, Walter P. Temple Sr., acquired the homestead, having recouped the family fortunes in real estate and oil investments. He had a Greek Revival-style mausoleum built at the entrance to the cemetery, where many members of the family and friends were interred. Also buried here are California’s last Mexican governor, Pio Pico, and his wife, Ygnacia. They were originally in another cemetery that the city dismantled in the 1920s. Workman and Pico had been great friends, so the Picos’ descendants asked that the couple be moved to the mausoleum. The cemetery is preserved at the six-acre Workman and Temple Homestead, acquired in 1981 by the City of Industry and restored as a cultural landmark. Tours: (818) 968-8492.

7. OLIVE GROVE CEMETERY

* 10135 S. Painter Ave.,

Santa Fe Springs

Just before the turn of the century, a colony of German Baptists known as Dunkers settled in the area to farm. In 1972, as industry began to move in, the Dunkers moved to Modesto, leaving behind their church and weed-filled graveyard. The Bible Missionary Church, with about 50 members, owns and maintains the cemetery where about 150 pioneering Dunkers and others are buried.

8. WOODLAWN CEMETERY

* 1847 14th St., Santa Monica

The picturesque 26.5-acre cemetery at Pico Boulevard and 14th Street served as the burial ground for the family of Juan Carrillo, an early Santa Monica mayor, from 1876 until the family donated the land to Santa Monica in 1898. (310) 450-0781.