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.

Other places in Things to Do