Cave Hill Cemetery

Chartered in 1848, Cave Hill was logged for construction on what was William Johnston's Cave Hill Farm, a rural property some distance east of Louisville. Johnston, who died in 1798, had built the first brick house in Louisville on the grounds circa 1788. City officials had purchased part of the land in the 1830s in anticipation of building a railroad through it and a workhouse was built there. The railroad was built elsewhere, and the land was leased to local farmers. In 1846, Mayor Frederick A. Kaye began investigating the possibility of developing a rural or garden-style cemetery on the grounds. It was when Hartford, Connecticut civil engineer Edmund Francis Lee was hired that the plan changed: Lee saw the "undulating hills, promontories, and basins as perfectly suited for landscaping the rural aesthetic." This movement simmered with the opening of nearby Cherokee Park in 1892. 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. 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. == Entrances, buildings and memorials ==

gravesite The signature Baxter Avenue entrance, called the "Broadway Entrance" by the cemetery, was completed in 1892. The Corinthian-style building includes a bell in its clock tower. The tower, once the tallest structure for miles, was frequently hit by lightning and last renovated in 2001. The Grinstead Drive entrance was built in 1913. The third public entrance on the residential street of Dearing Court 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 cemetery contains monuments and graves of three Union army generals. The 32nd Indiana Monument, also known as the August Bloedner Monument, is separately on the National Register. == Beargrass Creek, cave ==

The middle fork of Beargrass Creek runs through Cave Hill, and a source stream flowing into the creek roughly divides the cemetery in the 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. == Trees, arboretum ==

The cemetery currently features more than 500 species of trees and shrubs, including some two dozen current state champion trees, including both native species as the pignut hickory (Carya glabra) and exotics as the Caucasian wingnut (Pterocarya fraxinifolia). The grounds are recognized as an arboretum. gravesite == Interments ==

There were about 120,000 people interred by 2002, with space remaining for 22,000 more graves. Notable among those interred in the cemetery is American Revolutionary War military war officer and founder of Louisville George Rogers Clark (1752–1818). More than 200 Confederate soldiers are buried in Section "O" of the cemetery, with 30–40 buried in a row near 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 267½) are a number of residents of the Kentucky Confederate Home, who died around the start of the 20th century. The confederate flag flies over the area. Within another U.S. Soldiers plot in Section E is one British war grave, of a soldier of the Machine Gun Corps, a member of the British Military Mission to the United States, who died in 1918. Portrait painter and cousin of Mark Twain, Mary Ann Xantippe "Tip" Saunders, was interred at Cave Hill Cemetery in 1922. Patty Hill and Mildred J. Hill (sisters), composers of the Happy Birthday song, are interred here. Muhammad Ali, boxing champion born in Louisville, was interred on June 10, 2016. Also interred are the founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken, Colonel Harland Sanders; American suffragist and campaigner Margaret Weissinger Castleman; and Mia Zapata, lead singer of punk band The Gits. Paul Hornung, Heisman Trophy winner and Green Bay Packer, was interred in 2020. == Gallery ==

Cave Hill National Cemetery 2.jpg|Union Monument in Louisville Cave Hill National Cemetery 3.jpg|Plaque quoting the poem "Bivouac of the Dead" GRC Gravesite.jpg|George Rogers Clark gravestone GRC Gravesite M1.jpg|George Rogers Clark marker 32nd Indiana Monument Louisville.jpg|The 32nd Indiana Monument == Documents ==

CaveHill1.jpg CaveHill2.jpg CaveHill3.jpg == See also ==