Sacramento City Cemetery

About this property

The Sacramento Historic City Cemetery (or Old City Cemetery), located at 1000 Broadway, at 10th Street, is the oldest existing cemetery in Sacramento, California. It was designed to resemble a Victorian garden and sections that are not located in level areas are surrounded by brick or concrete retaining walls to create level terraces. The cemetery grounds are noted for their roses which are said to be among the finest in California. The cemetery was established in 1849 when Sacramento founder John Augustus Sutter, Jr. donated 10 acres (4.0 ha) to the city for this purpose. The grounds were landscaped in the Victorian Garden style popular at the time. The New Helvetia Cemetery was founded in c. 1845 and was also prone to flooding, which would unbury the bodies from the earlier graves; as a result some of the burials from New Helvetia were reinterred to the Sacramento Historic City Cemetery starting as early as 1850. In 1850, some 600 victims of the Cholera epidemic that swept the city were buried in mass graves in City Cemetery. The remainder 800 victims claimed by the epidemic were buried in the nearby New Helvetia Cemetery, also in mass graves. In 1852, a monument was erected to those who died. However the exact location of the mass burial plot is not known. In 1856, the city engaged a cemetery superintendent and began to plan the grounds. In 1857, the gatehouse and bell tower were constructed. These were demolished in 1949 during the widening of Broadway. Several fraternal groups purchased sections for their members including the Masons (1859), Odd Fellows (1861) and the Sacramento Pioneers Association (1862). The city set aside a section for volunteer firemen in 1858 and members of the Grand Army of the Republic in 1878. The cemetery continued to acquire additional land through 1880 when Margaret Crocker, widow of Edwin B. Crocker, donated 23 acres (9.3 ha) to expand the grounds to 60 acres (24 ha) total. The City of Sacramento owns the cemetery, which today encompasses 44 acres (18 ha). It was declared a State Historic Landmark on May 5, 1957, by the State Historical Landmarks Commission. The cemetery was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2014. Hardin Bigelow – first directly elected Mayor of Sacramento John Bigler – third Governor of California and Minister to Chile Newton Booth – United States Senator & eleventh Governor of California Amos P. Catlin – California State Legislator that wrote and carried the bill to make Sacramento the permanent capital of California George B. Cosby – Confederate State Army Brigader General Aimée Crocker – heiress daughter of Edwin B. Crocker

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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