Old Liberty, a stagecoach stop in the northeast section of San Joaquin County, linked lower Sacramento to the gold country. As weary pioneers passed through Liberty, they buried loved ones here, including several children who could not survive the harsh traveling conditions. Many could not afford the $2 burial fee inside the 5 acre cemetery grounds, and Mr. Sexton said that fresh mounds sometimes surrounded the cemetery in the morning. In 1961, as California Highway and Public Works excavated around Liberty Cemetery for the state's new section of Highway 99, workers said they moved 19 graves west of the cemetery gates, including one mass grave of small children. No one knows where the children came from. It was also speculated that more grave sites lie beneath the highway and in the surrounding vicinity of Liberty Cemetery. Some of the last graves placed in the cemetery were at this location, where a Public Works marker for the relocated graves once stood before being destroyed by a grass fire along with 40 to 50 other wooden cemetery markers.