CABINET - A group of volunteers is working to restore some dignity to the final resting place of earlier inhabitants of eastern Bonner County.

The cemetery took root on the south side of the Clark Fork River near the Montana border in 1923, when Michael Edward Mulvihill donated an acre to the burial place's founders.

It's believed the last burial there was in 1970 and the main influencing forces on the cemetery in recent years have been neglect and decay.

Until now.

Delores Matthews and Craig Nelson revived the Cabinet Cemetery Association with the hope of restoring some grace to the burial ground.

"Our main goal is to bring back respect to the people who are buried there," Matthews said.

Curiosity prodded Matthews into visiting the site, when a neighbor, the late Johnny Painter, said he had the deed to the cemetery.

It was overgrown with weeds, brush and dense fern patches which dwarfed the modest headstones.

"There's so much that you don't see," said volunteer Holly Essex, who cleared brush at the cemetery with her mother, Cookie, on Thursday.

It's not known exactly how many are interred on the hillside cemetery, although the new nonprofit association hopes to eventually discover that. There is a purported list of people buried there, but there is no known plot map.

"Once you can find one grave, you can start looking for others," Holly Essex said.

Saving Graves, a cemetery preservation alliance, estimates there are 15 gravestones, some of which are broken and toppled. Some plots are well-defined by small enclosures, but volunteers are pretty sure there are others which have no defining features.

"We want to be cautious not to disturb unmarked burial sites," Matthews said.

Robert Lamburth & Associates in Clark Fork donated a survey of the cemetery and the Catholic Diocese donated a half-acre of adjoining surplus land it owned. The diocese acquired the half-acre in 1924 from Bonner County School District No. 20 for $125, according to Matthews' research.

Emma Fluckiger recently took time to restore elegance to a child's brush-obscured grave before leaving for college.

The latest incarnation of the association is strictly a maintenance organization. It has no intention of getting involved with burials.

The restoration project also shines a light on a rich piece of eastern Bonner County history.

The cemetery is located near the faded town site of Cabinet, a once-bustling community that "clung tenaciously to its existence," Mona Leeson Vanek said in her book, "Behind These Mountains."

Cabinet took hold in 1883, when the Northern Pacific Railroad arrived, according to Vanek. It was a few miles upstream from Cabinet Landing, a historic river benchland utilized by Native Americans, fur trappers, explorers, settlers and travelers for centuries.

The town boasted a wood-framed railroad depot and served as a mail stop and supply point for anyone who settled west of Heron, Mont., Vanek wrote. Cabinet had a couple of hotels, three general merchandise stores and two churches.

"Prospecting and mining flourished in the surrounding mountains, in boom and bust spurts, wholly dependent on men who grubstaked efforts," Vanek wrote.