On Monday, Aug. 4, the Commerce City Council considers a bid from a real estate developer to relocate the interred bodies at Wilson-Wheeler-King Cemetery for the development of a 600-acre business park. GPB's Chase McGee reports.

A man comforts a woman while she speaks to a city council.

Rebecca Wheeler-Bunce addresses the Commerce City Council. She spent years looking for the burial site of her ancestor, James Wheeler.

Credit: Chase McGee / GPB News

On Monday, the Commerce City Council will discuss the fate of a 200-year-old cemetery. A local developer is asking for permission to relocate the deceased to build a new 600-acre business park.

About a quarter-mile into deep woods, the once overgrown Wilson-Wheeler-King Cemetery is now covered in survey flags, red flags where its interred residents’ heads are, yellow at their feet. Some sit side by side, married couples buried together. A few flags sit inches apart, apparently children who died in their youth.

According to documents from archaeological firm R.S. Webb and Associates, there could be as many as 200 bodies buried there.

Among those is James Wheeler, a Revolutionary War veteran. Some descendants of the Wilson family claim his close family friend and fellow veteran, William Wilson, is buried in the cemetery as well.

Last month, Wheeler's great-great-great-granddaughter, Rebecca Wheeler-Bunce, was joined by around 50 other descendants and advocates to ask the city council to keep the cemetery in place.

“It was abandoned, but not abandoned in the sense that nobody cared," she said. "It was abandoned because nobody could get to it.”

Advocates want better access to the remote site, or at the very least, ask that builders avoid touching the cemetery.

The city council votes on the measure Aug. 18.

Tags: Georgia  cemeteries  city council