Oak Hill Cemetery

About this property

Oak Hill Cemetery is a historic rural cemetery located at Evansville, Indiana. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2004. Oak Hill Cemetery traces its roots to 12 August 1850, when the Evansville City Council appointed a committee to search for a new cemetery to replace the first public burying grounds located on the southeast edge of town at Mulberry and Fifth Streets. Within two years they selected a plot of land, then known as "Lost Hill," which was 56-acres of undeveloped land about a mile and half from the then city limits. By February 1853 lots were offered for sale. By February 1853 lots were offered for sale and the cemetery saw its first burial, Ellen Johnson who died at age 2 on 18 February 1853, just 10 days after the City Council selected “Oak Hill” as the site's official name. Burials from the city's previous cemetery. Later land purchases (up until 1924) gave the Cemetery its present acreage. The current appearance of the cemetery landscape — particularly its plantings – was primarily nurtured over an 80-year period (1853–1932) during the tenure of two superintendents. For the first four decades of the cemetery's existence (1853–1897), the beautification of the grounds was the responsibility of John S. Goodge. In his obituary (June 1897), he was credited with the "work of making the beautiful place the Oak Hill now is." Some of the more mature plantings are very likely the result of Goodge's endeavors. His successor, William Halbrook (1898–1932), brought to his position his knowledge and experience gained as a florist, and a large portion of Oak Hill's verdancy was the result of his handiwork. Since 1932, some planting has occurred, but not on the scale of the preceding 80 years. The cemetery includes the French Renaissance style Administration Building (1899, 1917, 1999); Entry Gate (1901); and classical revival style Receiving Vault (1911) designed by Clifford Shopbell of Harris & Shopbell. The cemetery has a number of notable landscape features in keeping with the 19th century rural cemetery movement including a variety of tree species. Bordering the site on its western side is Highway 41; on other sides are low-scale, modern-era residential and commercial neighborhoods. In spite of this encroachment, the cemetery has preserved its original pastoral tranquility. The site selected for the cemetery was, according to a contemporary newspaper account, a “hillock, a wilderness of underbrush and briars, and called at that with a mantle of loess, underlain by sandstone." A 1927 topographical map showing the cemetery tract depicted the land of the original 1852 purchase as gradually ascending on the south from the floodplain level of 390 feet to a height of 430 feet. On the north end, there was a sharp drop-off. In profile, as viewed particularly from the east, the contour of the hill looked like the back of a two-humped Bactrian camel with a central Erosional vale. The early burials took place on the southern slope, close to the ridge. Today, interment sites not only blanket the entire prominence, but also cover the flat lands at the foot of the hill on three sides. Although the Cemetery comprises 175 acres, less than 120 have been platted and made available for interments. A tract of about 55 acres across the northern part of the Cemetery bordering Morgan Avenue has been farm-leased.

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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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