MAQUOKETA, Iowa (AP) — Commissions that oversee some of Iowa’s oldest pioneer cemeteries are struggling to accommodate requests for new burials. To qualify as a pioneer cemetery, there must be fewer than 12 burials in the past 50 years. That limit and other factors can make it hard to approve requests for new burials. The Telegraph Herald reports the Jackson County Pioneer Cemetery Commission has been working to establish rules allowing residents to be buried in the old cemeteries.

Allen and Marjorie Fowler have been waiting for three years for Jackson County to establish rules that would let them be buried in the Union Center Cemetery, near their family farm east of Maquoketa. JoAnn Caven, a member of the commission, said the panel hopes to establish rules in 2019.