Memorial tiles available for $200 are being sold to help cover operational and maintenance costs at East Union Cemetery.

The cemetery — on the southwest corner of Louise Avenue and Union Road — has no paid staff and is run 100 percent by volunteers.

The memorial tiles may contain up to 25 characters per line with a maximum of four lines.

“They are designed to allow people to honor others,” said Janice Zacharias who has served the past 10 years as president of the cemetery association.

The tiles will be placed on the side of the cemetery’s columbaria that was recently completed and has 800 niches for urns.

The cemetery was established in 1872.

“It was out east of Lathrop as Manteca didn’t exist back then,” Zacharias noted.

There are 3,200 people buried at the cemetery with space for 800 more.

The public is invited to  view the new columbaria, the Veteran’s Memorial, and the general grounds.

The cemetery entrance arch along Louise Avenue dedicated on Memorial Day in 1920 in honor of area pioneers is a wealth of information about those that first settled in the area. Tablets on each side of the arch tell when each head of the household came to California between 1846 and 1879.

Sixty pioneers who came to the Manteca area between those years are buried at the cemetery.

The cemetery office is staffed Monday through Friday in the morning from 8 to 11:30 a.m., though the grounds are open seven days a week during daylight hours.

The mailing address is 1035 North Union Road, Manteca, 95336, while the phone is 209-823-8533.

To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com