LA's first integrated cemetery, 1884 — Hattie McDaniel buried here after Hollywood Forever refused her, alongside the first crematorium west of the Mississippi
1831 W Washington Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90007
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free to visit during open hours
Access
Wheelchair OK
Paved roads throughout; some uneven ground near older sections
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1884 · First integrated cemetery in Los Angeles (1884) · Burial site of Hattie McDaniel — first Black Academy Award winner · Burial site of director Tod Browning and actress Anna May Wong · First crematorium west of the Mississippi River (1887) · Included in Cemetery Travel's 222 Cemeteries to See Before You Die
Angelus-Rosedale Cemetery opened in 1884 with an explicit policy of accepting burials from any race or background, at a time when most Los Angeles burial grounds practiced segregation. This made it the city's — and by some accounts California's — first integrated cemetery, a status that shaped who ended up within its walls over the following century.
The cemetery's most prominent grave belongs to Hattie McDaniel, who in 1939 became the first Black actor to win an Academy Award, receiving the Best Supporting Actress honor for her role in Gone With the Wind. When McDaniel died in 1952, Hollywood Forever Cemetery — where she had specifically requested burial — refused because of its then-segregation policy. She was interred at Angelus-Rosedale instead. A memorial marker was eventually added at Hollywood Forever in 1999, but McDaniel's actual remains are at Rosedale.
The cemetery also holds the graves of director Tod Browning, who made Dracula (1931) and Freaks (1932) for Universal Pictures and MGM, and silent-film actress Anna May Wong, one of the first major Chinese-American film stars. The first crematorium to operate west of the Mississippi River was installed on the grounds in 1887.
The cemetery was included in Cemetery Travel's 222 Cemeteries to See Before You Die, and its Victorian-era monuments have attracted preservation and dark-tourism interest as the grounds have aged into picturesque decay.
Sources
Angelus-Rosedale does not have a single dominant ghost story tied to a specific grave or documented event. What it has is the density of difficult history and notable burials that draws dark-tourism visitors who find the conventional ghost account less interesting than the factual record.
The cemetery's age — it has been accepting burials since 1884, long enough for Victorian-era monuments to have weathered into a particular kind of atmospheric decay — and its location in a densely populated part of central Los Angeles create a contrast that visitors frequently note. The grounds are large enough to feel removed from the street while remaining entirely within the city.
Voices From the Grave, a blog documenting Los Angeles-area historic and paranormal sites, published a dedicated exploration of Angelus-Rosedale in 2026, treating it as a site of layered stories rather than a single haunting narrative. The PBS SoCal feature on the cemetery's 'lively lives' approaches the same material from the historical angle — the people buried there, the policy that permitted integrated burial when others did not, and what that says about who gets to be remembered in publicly accessible ground.
Paranormal researchers include the cemetery in regional catalogs of LA dark-tourism sites. The combination of age, notable burials, the first-crematorium distinction, and the civil rights resonance of its founding policy makes it one of the more historically substantial cemetery visits available in Los Angeles.
Notable Entities
Walk the grounds of Angelus-Rosedale, founded in 1884 as the first Los Angeles cemetery open to all races. Notable graves include Hattie McDaniel (the first Black actor to win an Academy Award), director Tod Browning, and Anna May Wong. The Victorian-era monuments and the first crematorium west of the Mississippi (1887) are key sites within the grounds.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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