Cave Hill Cemetery is a Victorian era National Cemetery and arboretum located at 701 Baxter Avenue, Louisville, Kentucky. It is open daily to the public from 8:00 AM to 4:45 PM (weather permitting). Its main entrance is on Baxter Avenue and there is a secondary one on Grinstead Drive. Both former Louisville mayors for whom these streets are named (James F. Grinstead and John G Baxter), are buried in Cave Hill Cemetery. It is the largest cemetery by area and number of burials in Louisville.

Cave Hill was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. Cave Hill National Cemetery, containing military graves, is also on the National Register, added in 1998.

History

Smyser Memorial

In 1846, Mayor Frederick A. Kaye began investigating the possibility of developing a garden-style cemetery on the grounds, a popular concept at the time. Hartford, Connecticut civil engineer Edmund Francis Lee was hired, who planned a cemetery with winding paths, graves across the tops of hills, and lakes and ponds in the valleys. The Cave Hill Cemetery Co. was chartered in February 1848, and the cemetery was dedicated on July 25, 1848. Before the era of large municipal parks, it was common for cities to promote a garden cemetery as a green oasis and recreation destination, and Louisville was no exception. This largely ended with the opening of Cherokee Park in 1892.^[1]

After administrators sold several acres of land for the burial of Union soldiers during the Civil War, local Confederate supporters purchased nearby land as well. Several deceased patients from the Brown General Hospital and other nearby army medical facilities were interred in Cave Hill Cemetery.

Johnston's farmhouse (in what is now sections 33 and 34) was converted to the city's pesthouse, and was demolished in 1872. Also in 1872, Beechhurst Sanitarium was built near the pesthouse and the modern Grinstead entrance entrance. Beechurst was torn down in 1936.

The grounds were expanded and remapped in 1888 to their modern size of nearly . In the 1980s razor wire was added to the brick walls surrounding Cave Hill to keep out after-hours visitors.

The first scenic overlook for the cemetery, Twin Lakes Scenic Overlook, opened on August 20, 2008.^[2]

Buildings and grounds

Colonel Sanders gravesite

There is a third public entrance on the residential street of Dearing Court. It was closed as of 2007. Another public entrance, also no longer in use, was built off Payne Street in 1910, closest to the military sections. There are several service entrances around the perimeter. Other buildings include the stone office building near the lake, and the Rustic Shelter House built in 1892 at a cost of $565.

The middle fork of Beargrass Creek runs through Cave Hill, and a source stream flowing into the creek roughly divides the cemetery in new (eastern) and old (western) sections. That stream flows from a spring near the cave that gave the property its name. The cave can be entered for about , and then there is a marginal amount of crawl space beyond that, however the cave is officially off limits. There are also five man-made lakes.

The cemetery currently features more than 500 species of trees and shrubs, and contains monuments and graves of three Union generals. The 32nd Indiana Monument, also known as the "August Bloedner Monument", is separately on the National Register.

Interments

George Rogers Clark gravesite

More than 200 Confederate soldiers are buried in Section "O" of the cemetery, with 30-40 buried in a row in the National Cemetery. The original wooden markers in Section "O" were replaced with stone markers in 1880-1881. A number of markers are marked as unknown. Included in the Section "O" burials is a Confederate Brigadier General, Alpheus Baker. There are two other Confederate generals buried in other locations in the cemetery. In the addition to Section "O" (lot 267 1/2) are a number of residents of the Kentucky Confederate Home, who died after the war around the turn of the century. The Confederate Flag flies over the area.

Gallery

<gallery> Image:Cave Hill National Cemetery.jpg|Union Monument in Louisville Image:Cave Hill National Cemetery 2.jpg|Union Monument in Louisville Image:Cave Hill National Cemetery 3.jpg|Plaque with the Bivouac of the Dead Image:Colonel Sanders Grave 1.jpg|Harlan Sanders gravesite Image:Colonel Sanders Grave 2.jpg|Harlan Sanders marker Image:Colonel Sanders Grave 3.jpg|Harlan Sanders headstone Image:GRC Gravesite.jpg|George Rogers Clark gravestone Image:GRC Gravesite 2.jpg|George Rogers Clark gravesite Image:GRC Gravesite M1.jpg|George Rogers Clark marker Image:GRC Gravesite M2.jpg|George Rogers Clark marker Image:JamesGuthrieMonumentPlaque.jpg|James Guthrie monument plaque Image:JamesSpeedInterment.jpg|James Speed interment Image:JohnBucklinGraveNew.jpg|Replacement gravestone for Louisville's first mayor John Bucklin Image:JoshuaSpeedInterment.jpg|Joshua Fry Speed interment, along with wife Fanny Henning Speed Image:LovellRousseauMonument.jpg|Lovell Rousseau monument Image:ThomasBramletteGrave.jpg|Kentucky Governor Thomas E. Bramlette's grave Image:Union Monument Louisville.jpg|The 32nd Indiana Monument </gallery>

Documents

<gallery> Image:CaveHill1.jpg Image:CaveHill2.jpg Image:CaveHill3.jpg </gallery>

Notes

1. ↑
2. ↑

References

• Thomas, Samuel W., Cave Hill Cemetery: A Pictorial Guide and Its History, Cave Hill Cemetery Company, Louisville, Kentucky 1985

See also

• History of Louisville, Kentucky
• List of attractions and events in Louisville, Kentucky
• List of botanical gardens in the United States
• List of mayors of Louisville, Kentucky
• Louisville in the American Civil War

External links

• Cemetery website
• Map of the Cemetery
• Photos of selected graves with GPS coordinates
• Confederate Burials
• Confederate Burials in the Cave Hill National Cemetery

fr:Cave Hill Cemetery