T     here are some people who find traveling for the purpose of visiting     cemeteries ghoulish. These individuals, however, should realize that a     century or so ago, perfectly normal people like them used to hang     out in cemeteries. This was because there was a paucity of public parks,     places where city folks could take a picnic and enjoy being someplace cool     and green and quiet. They were untroubled by the fact that they were     surrounded by dead people, so much so that they left their trash on the     ground and tore up the lawns. So the cemeteries put an end to that     practice. But then we got parks, so it’s all OK.



      Almost every large midwestern city still has at least one enormous parklike     19th-century cemetery. Several, notably Bellefontaine in     Saint Louis and Elmwood in Detroit, currently double as     arboretums. Elmwood in particular is a fine example of 19th-century     landscape architecture, as you might expect from a place designed by     Frederick Law Olmsted, who’s best known for his work on Central Park. It’s     also notable for being the first integrated cemetery in the midwest.     Several members of the Underground Railroad network are buried there, and     the cemetery offers an African-American Heritage Tour.



  Then there is haunting, which is entirely different from haunted.    Rochester Cemetery in Rochester, Iowa, roughly halfway     between Davenport and Iowa City, is such a place. Because the town never     plowed the cemetery, the prairie has gradually overtaken the gravesites.     It’s now a marvel of biodiversity: there are 400 plant species on its 13     and a half acres, 337 of which are native to the region. “I came to think     of it as the prairie’s own graveyard,” wrote Stephen Longmire, a writer and     photographer (and former Reader contributor) who spent a year documenting the cemetery for his book    Life and Death on the Prairie. “A graveyard is a living map of the     community over time, the place where the underworld and the heavens meet.”   v



1441 Monument Ave., Springfield, IL, 217-789-2340, oakridgecemetery.org

Elmwood Cemetery

1200 Elmwood St., Detroit, MI, 313-567-3453, elmwoodhistoriccemetery.org

Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site

30 Ramey St., Collinsville, IL, 618-346-5160, cahokiamounds.org

Greenwood Cemetery

606 S. Church St., Decatur, IL, 217-422-6563

Rochester Cemetery

1179 and 1180 Cemetery Rd., Tipton, IA, 563-272-1981