the cave hill cemetery tour
cave hill history

Originally part of William Johnston’s Cave Hill Farm, the cemetery is a landscaped burial ground east of downtown Louisville with its main entrance at the intersection of Baxter Ave. , Cherokee Rd., and E. Broadway. William Johnston, appointed the county’s first clerk by the Virginia legislature in 1783, supposedly built the area’s first brick house in 1788 on the land know for its stone quarries and the spring that emanated from a hillside cave. After Johnston died in 1797 and his wife Elizabeth remarried some years later, Johnston’s land was divided and sold according to his will.
In the mid-1830s, meetings about developing a railroad between Louisville and Frankfort prompted city officials to purchase parts of the farm for the expected railroad path. Some of the land was also set aside for burial lots and a workhouse. After the track’s final route bypassed the property, the fields were leased to local farmers, and the brick residence was turned into the city’s pesthouse to accommodate people with contagious diseases.
In 1846 Mayor Frederick Kaye and the City Council appointed a committee to investigate the possibility of developing the grounds as a garden-style cemetery, a concept that was gaining popularity at the time. They hired a civil engineer who convinced the city to build a cemetery using the area’s natural rolling landscape instead of leveling the site for burials. The Methodist (later Eastern) Cemetery located adjacent to Cave Hill on Baxter Ave. had been in use since 1844.
In February 1848 the General Assembly of Kentucky chartered the Cave Hill Cemetery Co., and the city then deeded 50 acres to the corporation. The city retained the land containing the quarries, and pesthouse. The cemetery opened on July 25, 1848. Deadly contagious diseases wreaked havoc throughout the city during this period and the cemetery quickly began accepting it first interments. Increased burials continued into the Civil War, especially after the administrators sold several acres near the workhouse at twenty-five cents per square foot for the burial of fallen Union soldiers. In response several local Confederate supporters purchased land nearby for the burial of downed southerners.
In the late 1860s the cemetery expanded and then another expansion again in the late 1880s brought the cemetery up to its current size of nearly 300 acres.
In 1880 the cemetery company began plans for the Baxter Ave. entrance. The clock tower and a two-thousand pound bell were added in 1892.
The Grinstead Dr.. entrance was originally the entryway to the city Pest House (see "stories to tell" note) which had once been the farm house at Cave Hill Farm, located in the N.E. part of the grounds between Sec. 33 & 35. A new three story buildingbuilding, which later became known as the Beechhurst Sanitarium, was built at that same site in 1872 and was torn down in the 1930s.
The spring branch of Beargrass Creek divides the cemetery into what is known as the new (eastern) and old (western) parts. Through grading and construction of dams, several lakes have been created along the ravine and are feeding spots for waterfowl. Extensive planting began with the first superintendent and features a collection of over five hundred species of trees and shrubs.
By 2001 there were approximately 120,000 people interred in the cemetery. There are room for 22,000 more. The most famous person buried, and most often visited, is the chicken entrepreneur Col. Harland Sanders. The cemetery contains one of the finest collections of outdoor monumental sculptures in the U.S. ranging from decorative tombstones to mausoleums.

For more details look for the book "Cave Hill Cemetery" published in 2001 by the Cave Hill Cemetery Company. "The Encyclopedia of Louisville" edited by John Kleber, is another source for history on Cave Hill.

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