 The cemetery is in the woods bordered by Verde Road and Highway 1.In 1939, the Federal Writers Project guidebook for California noted, "The village of Purisima, once a lively town on Jose Maria Alivso's Rancho Canada y Arroyo de la Purisima, is ghostly and deserted now.Its weathered gray buildings stand among mosshung cypresses and eucalytpus trees, their windows broken, their stairs falling in, their facades rudely stuck with gay circus posters."