Prime real estate: Reporter buys plots in historic cemetery

State of lay: I don't plan on dying anytime soon.

• But I've always liked the historic cemetery, which is just a few blocks from my home and includes some remarkable monuments to former governors, mayors and city founders.

Details: Woodland is home to 50,000+ burials but empty plots are no longer regularly offered by the city because space isn't available.

• A woman from Ankeny listed three empty plots for sale on eBay, which had been in her family for decades but were not going to be used.
• I made a few inquiries to the city's parks department to confirm the deal was legit and then paid $3K for the lots.

The intrigue: Cemetery officials are unsure how many empty plots Woodland has, DSM Parks and Recreation director Ben Page tells me.

• Some people have no idea they have plots left in their family names and record keeping from that far back is not always easy to understand, he says.

Of note: City code allows cemetery caretakers to reclaim empty and abandoned plots after at least 100 years with no internment or transfer.

Yes, but: A fire at St. Ambrose church years before the city started managing the cemetery destroyed some of the records, making it impossible to verify empty plot ownership in some cases, cemetery manager Ganesh Ganpat tells me.

• Page says he cannot see a time when the city would have the bandwidth to check each sale and cross reference them with actual burials.

The bottom line: If you want to be permanently planted at Woodland, get cozy with an old family who has some extra plots.

🎄 One amusing thing to go: The person who sold me the plots declined to do so individually, which means my hubby and I now have an extra plot.

• We joke that it's gonna make a very fine stocking stuffer one year.

Editor's note: This article first appeared in the Axios Des Moines newsletter.