What needs to be done

The ongoing work

• Clearing brush and dead trees. Fast-growing trees, brambles, and fallen limbs still cover most of the six acres beyond the front lawn. Cutting back growth is how new grave sites get found in the first place.
• Removing dumped debris. Decades of trash — shopping carts, tires, cans, bottles — sit tangled in the creek and undergrowth. Clearing it also helps water move through the site's chronically clogged culverts instead of flooding it.
• Documenting grave sites. Volunteers use GPS and simple survey flags to mark and record newly found headstones before they're lost to brush again — slow, careful work that's core to finally having an accurate map of who's buried here.
• Memorial Day flag placement. Each year, volunteers place American flags along the veterans' section — a small act of care in a cemetery that otherwise has no one assigned to it.
• Addressing the flooding. Two creek tributaries meet at the site and regularly overflow through broken, undersized culverts. A rain garden, proposed as part of a 2022 Eagle Scout project, is one step toward a longer-term fix.

What it's been up against

Duncan Heights has no legal owner. Its 1931 corporation dissolved into a chain of names — shareholders, funeral directors, distant relatives — none of whom ever held clear title. The Township of McCandless has gone the legal route to establish access to the property, but state law generally leaves abandoned cemeteries as a municipal burden, and McCandless has said it can't fund a full restoration alone.

That means there's no formal "join our organization" process. Coordination happens informally, mostly through the Friends of Duncan Heights Cemetery Facebook page, where work days are announced and volunteers connect.