Transportation
A Funeral Car Named 'Descanso,' or, When Death Rode the Rails in America
In the first decades of the 20th century, if you died in a city, you may have traveled toward your final resting place via public transit.
In the first decades of the 20th century, if you died in a city, one of the ways you might travel toward your final resting place was by public transit.
“In L.A. in the early years, the cemeteries were right next to the churches,” says David Housh, curator of the Pacific Railroad Society. “Then those got too crowded, and they had to move them out to the countryside. And not too many people had cars.”