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 yearlong 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 and never-before-seen vintage photos from the Spring Grove archives.