Topeka ? A planned trail project encroaches on a cemetery that was owned by the nation’s only American Indian vice president, city officials said.

The caretaker of the Curtis Family Cemetery said last week that city workers drove equipment onto the cemetery grounds.

The city said records showed the planned Soldier Trail would avoid the cemetery, but spokesman David Bevens acknowledged Friday that the encroachment had taken place.

“Whether we are on top of unmarked graves, we don’t have a clue,” Bevens said.

And Jeff Hunt, an assistant city engineer, said, “Preliminary results indicate we are on the cemetery property with the proposed trail.”

The cemetery was owned by Charles Curtis, a Topeka native who was Herbert Hoover’s vice president from 1929 to 1933. Curtis’ grandfather founded the cemetery, which does not hold the former vice president’s grave. He is buried at another cemetery in Topeka.

Ann Andrews, who has been the cemetery’s caretaker since 1994, said she told city officials where the cemetery’s boundaries and graves are. She said city workers damaged a fence when they brought equipment onto a portion of the cemetery containing unmarked graves.

Andrews said there are 15 marked graves and 20 to 50 unmarked graves.

She said Hunt asked her Friday to contact Curtis’ descendants about the possibility of the city securing an easement for the trail.

She said she would contact the descendants, but added, “I don’t think the family will agree to leave the trail where it’s at.”

Bevens said a consultant mismarked the cemetery’s western boundary by 15 feet, leading city workers to cut across cemetery property. Property line markers were removed when a creek was rechanneled after the heavy 1951 flood, he said.

Construction equipment building the trail cut a triangle-shaped portion of the cemetery measuring 40 feet long and 10 feet deep at its widest into the cemetery, Bevens said.

Construction on that part of the trail was halted after the consultant discovered the error on Thursday, Bevens said.

The city will survey the boundary today.