Landscape Information
Established in 1887, the 23-acre cemetery is situated on a high bluff overlooking the Ocmulgee River on land adjacent to Rose Hill Cemetery, an older rural cemetery founded in the 1840s. The picturesque site was designed by Calvert Vaux, Samuel Parsons, Jr., and George K. Radford, with curvilinear drives and paths that respond to the site’s natural hillocks. Copses of mature trees and evergreen shrubs are selectively planted to maintain a sense of open parkland, while headstones and grave markers are laid out in arcs and curves that neatly follow the pattern of the meandering roads. The only extant feature the firm retained on the site was a Civil-War era redoubt overlooking the river. A half-timber and brick gatehouse designed by Peter E. Dennis was erected in 1897, and the cemetery also includes an imposing white marble mausoleum built in 1918 in a simplified neoclassical style. The cemetery now encompasses 125 acres and 17,000 gravesites; it was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.
