Calvary Cemetery (Sioux City)

Calvary Cemetery sits at 28th Street and Cassleman on the west side of Sioux City, in Woodbury County. It is a Catholic cemetery and, according to local history accounts, the second-oldest cemetery in the city, placing its origins among Sioux City's early decades as a Missouri River trading and meatpacking center.

Like many older cemeteries, Calvary is divided into sections of differing age, with the oldest graves in an upper portion of the grounds reached by a dirt cut-through. This older section is where the cemetery's folklore is concentrated.

The central legend concerns a headstone carved in the shape of, or from, a tree. In the most dramatic telling it is described as a 'hanging tree' — a tree from which executions were carried out before the area became a cemetery, supposedly with a rope still attached above the marker. This claim is not historically documented, and it is contradicted by visitors who report that the feature is simply a concrete or carved tree-form gravestone, a common Victorian funerary style (often associated with the Woodmen of the World fraternal order) rather than any gallows.

The cemetery is an active burial ground covered in regional haunted-history surveys, including local broadcast coverage and Sioux City history projects. As with all working cemeteries, visitors are expected to come during daylight and to treat the grounds and graves respectfully.