Cemetery Contacts:

Greg Anderson: (360) 778-1771

Chris Jankowski: (360) 813-2786

Rich Daniels: [email protected]

Ashley Riley (board-appointed Volunteer Conservator): [email protected]

Managed by Renton Lodge No. 29:

Mailing address: 1299 Grow Avenue NW, Bainbridge Island, WA 98110

Phone: (206) 842-8846

Kane Cemetery is the oldest cemetery on Bainbridge Island. It is located on Lafayette Avenue, next to the historic community of Port Madison. The cemetery was founded by George Anson Meigs, a pioneering man who was one of the largest lumber and shipping magnates on the Puget Sound. He founded the Port Madison lumber mill in 1854, which established the town as Washington territory's center of logging and shipbuilding. His daughter, Lillian, was the first white child born on Bainbridge Island. Around 1874 Meigs donated one acre of his own land to Kane Masonic Lodge to establish a town cemetery. Prior to the founding of the cemetery, burials took place on Treasure Island in the harbor, known at the time as Dead Man's Island. They also frequently took place in people's yards or gardens. Erosion issues at Dead Man's Island lead the community to begin seeking a different community burial grounds. After Kane Cemetery was created, many of the burials there and around the island were reinterred at the new cemetery. In 1990, the Grand Lodge gave authorization to the Kane Cemetery Committee of the Renton Lodge to begin expanding cemetery facilities. A columbarium wall, the first one on Bainbridge Island, was built with 408 niches. Currently, Kane Cemetery is considered a mature cemetery because there are no new ground plots available for purchase. Around 2010, the lodge undertook a project to repair many of the cemetery's oldest headstones that had fallen into disrepair. (Cemetery history provided by Ashley Riley).