Cincinnati Cemeteries: The Queen City Underground

Categories: Local Interest , Outdoors & Nature

My seven-week-old daughter and I went to Spring Grove Cemetery today.  Unfortunately for her, she slept through her entire first visit and missed the beautiful spring scenery: pink blooms on weeping cherry trees, ducks ambling across tranquil lakes, and monuments to the departed stretching to the sky. 

According to Cincinnati Cemeteries: The Queen City Underground by Kevin Grace and Tom White, Spring Grove Cemetery was created in 1845 after several cholera epidemics swept the city.  It was designed to resemble a landscaped park that provided dignified burials and a pastoral setting for the bereaved—as it still does today. 

Spring Grove also attracted people who wanted to stroll the grounds.  You can plan your next visit with the cemetery’s year-long guide to seasonal color, The Grove in Bloom.  And be sure to take along Cincinnati Cemeteries or Spring Grove: Celebrating 150 Years by Blanche Linden as you quietly unearth our city’s past.

A new book called Beauty in the Grove: Spring Grove Cemetery and Arboretum by Phil Nuxhall will be published this September by Orange Frazer Press, featuring photography by Randall Schieber and Charles Gast, along with never-before-seen vintage photos from the Spring Grove archives.