Elmwood Cemetery

In 1846 when this was a farm on the outskirts of Detroit, a group of gentlemen formed a corporation and purchased the land for use as a public cemetery. The trustees patterned the grounds after Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and utilized the ideas of the famous nineteenth-century landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmsted. Parent’s Creek, renamed Bloody Run after the battle fought between Pontiac and the British in 1763, serves as the focus in the informal country garden landscape. Albert and Octavius Jordon designed the handsome Gothic Revival chapel, which opened for services in 1856. The chapel’s limestone walls blend into the natural ravine and tree-shaded paths. Famous people buried here include General Russell Alger, geologist Douglass Houghton, and Territorial Governor Lewis Cass.