Woodland Cemetery is the oldest cemetery in Des Moines, Iowa, having been established in 1848, before Des Moines was the state capital.[1] It is a municipal cemetery owned and operated by the Des Moines Parks and Recreation Department. It covers 69 acres (28 ha) at the corner of 20th Street and Woodland Ave[2] and is the site of over 80,000 graves.
History
The cemetery was created in 1848 when five local farmers donated 5.5 acres (2.2 ha) of land to create it.[3] It was originally called Fort Des Moines Cemetery.[1] The first burial took place in 1850, the burial of Thomas Casady, the infant son of Iowa state senator Phineas M. Casady.[4] The city took ownership of the cemetery in 1857, and purchased an additional 36.5 acres in 1864.[5] It has since been expanded to 69 acres (28 ha)[2] and now houses over 80,000 graves.[5] The City Receiving Vault, which was used to store bodies when the ground was too frozen for graves to be dug, was built in the 1880s.[5]
In 1986, the city council of Des Moines designated the cemetery a local historic landmark.[1] Various restoration projects have been undertaken in recent years. A new arch over the entrance was constructed in 2012.[5] An effort to restore the mausoleum of Samuel Merrill, the seventh governor of Iowa was started.[2] A project to add markers to hundreds of previously unmarked children's graves on "Baby Hill" from the earliest days of the cemetery concluded successfully in April 2017.[3]
^ abHudson, David; Marvin Bergman; Loren N. Horton (2008). The Biographical Dictionary of Iowa. Iowa City: Published for the State Historical Society of Iowa by the University of Iowa Press. pp. 259–260, 333–334. ISBN9781587297243. OCLC296752419. Retrieved May 11, 2017 – via Google Books.
