ASARCO has hired 5D Mining to do a clean-up and renovation project of the Ray Memorial Cemetery. The work has already started on the historic cemetery.
The cemetery was created for the families of the deceased in Ray, Sonora and Barcelona who were destined to have their homes and the towns buried in the open pit mine now owned by ASARCO.
Kennecott Copper Corporation who owned the mine at the time, paid to have the bodies disinterred from the cemetery in Ray and reinterred in the new cemetery. Over 2,500 bodies were reinterred in the Ray Memorial Cemetery. The reinterment project of 1973 was supervised by Griffith & Sons Mortuary. Due to poor record keeping at the time, 500 graves were marked as unknown.