Lancaster Cemetery

Lancaster Cemetery, on East Lemon Street about a mile northeast of Penn Square, is the city's grand 19th-century landscape graveyard. Founded in 1849, it sits on a low hill with shade trees, winding paths, and elaborate Victorian monuments. The headstones read like a directory of Lancaster's industrial and political families.

Look for the Italianate brick chapel near the entrance and the small stone crematorium — the first of its kind built in the country. The cemetery is open to the public during daylight hours and is popular for a quiet half-hour walk.

things to do sight
A story
The cemetery was Lancaster's first 'rural' burial ground in the mid-19th-century sense — a landscaped park outside the urban grid where families could picnic among the graves. The site contains the first public crematorium in the United States, opened on the grounds in 1884.