North Whidbey’s first columbarium was carefully lowered into place by a huge crane Tuesday at Oak Harbor’s Maple Leaf Cemetery.

“Maple Leaf Cemetery is stepping into the future,” said cemetery supervisor Michael Dougliss as he watched a crane lift the 13,000-pound structure from the back of a flatbed and carefully drop it in place on a circular patch of concrete poured just for the occasion.

A columbarium is a structure of vaults lined with recesses for urns that contain the ashes of the departed. The Maple Leaf columbarium contains 64 units.

The decision by the cemetery commissioners to invest $15,000 in a columbarium is simply a reflection of the times, when more and more people are choosing cremation for their remains over a traditional burial.

“We have a lot more cremations now,” said Dougliss. He estimated that 70 percent of Maple Leaf’s burials today are of cremated remains.

Until the columbarium arrived, a person’s only choice for a North Whidbey burial was to purchase a small grave plot. Cremation grave plots sell for $500, compared to a columbarium vault which will cost $700.

But Dougliss said the columbarium will be less expensive overall because there’s no need to purchase a gravestone. Each vault is covered by a marble slab that contains a plate for engraving.

This apparently is only the second columbarium on all of Whidbey Island. Bayview Cemetery on South Whidbey has one, but this is a first for North or Central Whidbey.

Jim Haddon, manager of Burley Funeral Chapel in Oak Harbor, is pleased to see another burial choice for his customers. “It was just get buried in the ground, now there’s a niche above the ground – a lot of people prefer that,” he said.

Haddon has been associated with the funeral business for more than 20 years and has seen the popularity of cremation grow, particularly on the West Coast. He said cremation accounts for only about 2 percent of burials in the Midwest, but upwards of 80 percent in some areas of the West Coast.

“On the West Coast people are more mobile, in the Midwest they stay in one area and have roots,” he explained. “When people are mobile they don’t do traditional burials.” He estimates Burley’s business is now 65 percent cremation burials.

Cost isn’t usually the deciding factor in whether people choose a traditional or cremation burial, according to Haddon, because services are similar either way. “Whether it’s a big box or a little box people still do the same things,” he said.

Dougliss said survivors enjoy the “easy access, above ground,” provided by a columbarium.

For information about burial choices, call Maple Leaf Cemetery at 679-3366.