Miami's 1897 municipal cemetery — racially segregated at founding, home to 9,000 burials including Julia Tuttle, and still active today
1800 NE 2nd Ave, Miami, FL 33132
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
$
Cemetery grounds free to visit. HistoryMiami's annual October ghost tour: $25 members / $35 non-members
Access
Wheelchair OK
Paved paths through cemetery grounds
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1897 · Oldest municipal cemetery in Miami-Dade County · Racial segregation documented from founding · National Register of Historic Places · Burial site of Julia Tuttle, founder of Miami
Miami City Cemetery was established in 1897, making it the city's first and only municipal burial ground. The first recorded burial — Graham Branscomb — took place on July 20, 1897, just one year after the city of Miami was formally incorporated. The cemetery was subdivided along racial lines from the start, with white burials concentrated on the east end and Black burials on the west. This arrangement reflected the broader segregation of early Miami, where the Black community had been instrumental in building the city but was systematically confined to specific zones.
The grounds hold the remains of Julia Tuttle (1848–1898), the Miami land developer whose persuasion of Henry Flagler to extend his railroad to the city effectively created modern Miami — she is the only woman known to have founded a major American city. John Sewell, Miami's third mayor, is also interred here, as is Mary Abbott, a pioneer in women's Olympic competition. Sixty-six Confederate veterans and twenty-seven Union veterans are buried in the cemetery, their markers sometimes yards apart.
The cemetery contains the only known oolitic (also called oolitic limestone) gravestones in the world — five stones formed from a distinctive local coral rock with unusual structural properties. The site was added to the National Register of Historic Places on January 4, 1989.
Today, ten to twenty burials occur here annually, meaning the cemetery remains active 127 years after its founding. Grave desecration incidents have been reported over the years, with some attributed to black-market demand for human remains used in Santería and other spiritual practices — a pattern documented by local media and law enforcement.
Sources
HistoryMiami Museum's Resident Historian Dr. Paul George has conducted annual evening walking tours of Miami City Cemetery for over thirty years, and the event typically sells out. The tour covers documented deaths with unusual circumstances among the prominent Miamians buried here — stories that George draws from historical records rather than folklore.
The cemetery's physical arrangement — with segregated sections reflecting the racial hierarchy of early Miami — lends the western section a particular weight. The graves of Black laborers who built the city stand in the section farthest from the entrance, largely unmarked or deteriorated compared to the marble monuments in the eastern plots.
More recent and concrete: the cemetery has been the site of documented grave desecration incidents, with some cases linked to demand for human remains used in religious and spiritual practices. Miami-Dade law enforcement has investigated multiple incidents over the years. The combination of the cemetery's age, its segregated layout, its still-active burial schedule, and these documented disturbances gives the site a character distinct from the purely historical haunted cemetery.
The five oolitic limestone gravestones — believed to be unique in the world — add a further layer of physical strangeness to the grounds: stones that form from a process not typically found in South Florida, preserving names that might otherwise have been lost.
Notable Entities
Free public access to the grounds during daylight hours. The cemetery contains approximately 9,000 burials including the tomb of Julia Tuttle, the 'Mother of Miami,' Civil War veterans from both Union and Confederate sides, and the only known oolitic limestone gravestones in the world.
HistoryMiami Museum's Resident Historian Dr. Paul George leads this annual evening walking tour each October, covering the mysterious deaths, scandalous lives, and buried secrets of Miami's oldest municipal cemetery. Tickets sell out. Contact HistoryMiami to register: citytours@historymiami.org or 305-375-1621.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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