National Register of Historic Places
Odd Fellows Rural Cemetery
Salem, Marion County, Oregon
The record
- Listed
- November 9, 2018
- Type
- Historic district
- Address
- 2201 Commercial St., SE., Salem
- County
- Marion
- State
- Oregon
- Contributing resources
- 2 structures, 1 site, 1 object
- Coordinates
- 44.92171, -123.04888
- Reference number
- 13000707
Slide toward Today to fade the historical sheet and see the modern map underneath.
The outline is the area recorded for this listing in National Park Service map data, drawn approximately.
David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford LibrariesUSGS Historical Topographic Map CollectionUSGS Historical Topographic Map CollectionUSGS Historical Topographic Map CollectionDavid Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries
The story
Written by AI from this property's National Register nomination and the record above; every sentence is checked against its sources before it appears here. Corrections: privacy@treealive.com
Odd Fellows Rural Cemetery is a cemetery historic district at 2201 Commercial St. SE in Salem, Marion County, established in 1854 by Chemeketa Lodge No. 1, I.O.O.F. The 17.05-acre district includes a contributing site, two contributing structures and a contributing object.
Why it's listed
It was listed under criterion D, with significance at both the state and local levels in community planning and development, politics and government, social history, landscape architecture and art. The nomination gives its period of significance as 1854 to 1961, spanning the cemetery's founding that year to the 1961 closure of its Commercial Street entrance for traffic safety.
Physical character
The grounds are laid out as a gridiron plat of 210 plots, crossed by a central carriage drive 33 feet wide and curving side lanes forming a heart-shaped figure. Plots are mounded with retaining walls, bordered by cast iron or wrought iron fences, and monuments include two family mausoleums and obelisks worked in marble, granite, sandstone and bronze.
Historical context
The Odd Fellows added eleven acres around the original five-acre parcel in 1861 and a 0.38-acre strip along Hoyt Street in 1890, expanding the grounds to their present 17.05 acres, and filed the cemetery's plat with Marion County in 1914. The Territorial Legislature arranged for Samuel R. Thurston's re-interment in 1852, and he was reburied in the cemetery in 1856; the City of Salem took over full operation of the grounds in 1966.