Mount Hope Cemetery

Mount Hope Cemetery was designed in 1836 and covers 300 acres on the edge of Bangor, making it one of Maine's largest and most historic burial grounds. The design follows the garden cemetery movement — winding paths, mature trees, gentle hills, and ornamental plantings that make it feel more like a park than a conventional burial ground. The headstones range from simple slate markers from the 1830s to elaborate Victorian monuments in granite.

For Stephen King fans, Mount Hope is required visiting: scenes from the 1989 film adaptation of Pet Sematary were filmed here, and King himself appears in a cameo as a minister. The cemetery is open to the public daily and is a genuinely pleasant place to walk in any season, quite apart from the King connection. Several notable Bangor figures are buried here, and the Bangor Historical Society offers guided tours of the grounds in summer.

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Mount Hope is one of America's oldest garden cemeteries — part of the rural cemetery movement of the 1830s that sought to create park-like burial grounds as places for the living as well as the dead. The designer, Charles G. Bryant, modelled it on Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Scenes from the film adaptation of King's Pet Sematary were filmed here, including King's cameo as the minister.

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