There’s a new twist in the story of PeaceHealth’s new hospital in Springfield. The site, set to open in August as Sacred Heart Medical Center at RiverBend, may be an old burial ground from the turn of the 20th century.
Construction workers hit something hard last Wednesday at about 1:15 p.m. while digging for top-quality soil on the south side of the hospital. A subcontractor from Wildish, the local construction company working on the site, stopped digging immediately when she felt something hard. The worker found part of a human jaw with teeth, a femur, a hipbone and some wood chips.
“The construction worker stopped right away,” said Springfield Police Sgt. John Umenhofer. “She was real sharp, and I’m impressed with how fast she reacted.”
Umenhofer, who was the officer on duty, responded to the call from PeaceHealth Medical Group and Sacred Heart representatives.
PeaceHealth spokeswoman Andrea Ash said she called police as soon as she learned of the human remains. Umenhofer and a team of four detectives responded.
“We had to make sure it wasn’t recent,” said Umenhofer. “We didn’t want to have to play catch up. For all we knew, it could have been two weeks old.”
When he arrived on the scene, Umenhofer learned the remains were probably old. Police quickly ruled out criminal activity in the case.
“We saw the jaw, and the teeth had no dental work done,” said Umenhofer. “So that was the first sign that the case was not recent. Then we saw the square nails, probably from a casket, and that was another sign that the case was old.”
The Lane County medical examiner asked University osteologist and archaeologist Guy Tasa to come to the scene for closer inspection.
Tasa and physical anthropology graduate student Jeanne McLaughlin initially believed the case to be archaeological, not forensic. When they arrived, the archaeologists confirmed their assumption. But Tasa said the tip-off didn’t come from the human remains.
“We could tell because we saw the square nails which were probably from, in this case, a coffin,” said Tasa. “The square nails are from before the 1920s at least, cut out of big sheets of metal. We saw the square and cross action. There was also wood debris mixed in with the remains.”
Tasa applied for an expedited excavation permit from the Oregon State Historic Preservation Office. The permit would allow Tasa and his team of researchers to begin digging immediately, removing the discovered skeletal remains and searching for potentially more human remains.
“At this point, we really don’t know one way or the other,” said Tasa, unsure whether there are more skeletal remains buried at the site. “We certainly looked around when they were digging the other day. When we go out there to do the recovery, we’ll do a more detailed search to see if anything is evident.”
Tasa said he will try to run DNA tests, search historical maps and research historical records in an effort to identify the deceased person. The researchers will work to find a next of kin. If a close living relative is found, he or she will be given the remains and the decision of where to rebury them.
In the meantime, Ash said she is waiting for Tasa to remove the bones and keep PeaceHealth updated through a verbal contract the museum now has with the hospital.
“The bones will be taken out of the site and kept in the University’s Museum of Natural and Cultural History for close analysis,” said Tasa.
Ash said the situation is unfortunate, especially if the site turns out to be a mass gravesite, though she said she has no reason to believe it will.
“We’re trying to be very respectful,” said Ash. “We have a guard in that area protecting the human remains. It’s private property, and we want to protect what’s been discovered.”
Ash said this discovery will not affect construction very much because the old human remains were found approximately 200 yards away from the main hospital site. Workers were only using that area for digging up topsoil for landscaping, and in the meantime, they can look elsewhere.
Umenhofer and Ash said the RiverBend site used to be a farm.
Because researchers found a casket with nails, Tasa was able to say he was fairly certain that the deceased is not of Native American descent. Umenhofer agreed that if it had been a Native American burial ground, artifacts like beads probably would have been found. Umenhofer said he once arrested a man who was stealing Native American artifacts along with the human remains.
“As of now, we’re pretty confident the skeleton is not a Native American person,” said Tasa. “We know that the first settler in this area, after the Native Americans, of course, was a Springfield resident with the last name Stevens from the 1850s or earlier. It might be related to that case; we don’t know.”
“From the skeletal remains, we’ll be able to determine the age, sex and health status of the person,” Tasa added.
The bones will not be able available for public viewing because of the sensitive nature of the case.
Dennis Jenkins, a researcher at the University’s State Museum of Anthropology, said he would have liked to help examine the human remains at the site.
“I thought this was pretty exciting for the hospital and the city of Springfield to come together to work on this,” said Jenkins.
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Human remains discovered at hospital site
Daily Emerald
May 17, 2008
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