Utica's 1850 rural cemetery and 'outdoor museum,' a Gothic-Revival landscape holding a U.S. vice president, two senators and a New York governor.
2201 Oneida Street, Utica, NY 13501
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Grounds are open to visitors at no charge during posted daylight hours.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Rolling landscaped grounds with paved drives, ponds, and some unpaved footpaths
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1850 · 1850 Rural Cemetery Movement · National Register of Historic Places (2017) · Designed by Almeron Hotchkiss · Burial Place of VP James S. Sherman and Senator Roscoe Conkling
Forest Hill Cemetery sits on Oneida Street in Utica, Oneida County. The cemetery was founded in 1848 and formally opened in June 1850, part of the mid-nineteenth-century rural cemetery movement that produced parklike, landscaped burial grounds intended as places for both interment and contemplative walking. It was created in part to relieve overcrowding at Utica's earlier Water Street burial ground.
The grounds were laid out by New York civil engineer Almeron Hotchkiss across roughly 166 acres, with rolling terrain, three ponds, and curving drives. A Gothic Revival gatehouse marks the entrance, and a receiving tomb and chapel were completed in 1863. The density and quality of its Victorian monuments earned the cemetery the nickname 'Utica's outdoor museum.'
Forest Hill is the resting place of a notable concentration of public figures. James S. Sherman, who served as Vice President of the United States from 1909 to 1912, is buried here, as are U.S. Senator Roscoe Conkling, New York Governor Horatio Seymour, and Supreme Court Justice Ward Hunt, among others who shaped the politics of nineteenth-century New York.
The cemetery was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2017 and remains in active use, operated as a nonprofit and open to visitors during daylight hours.
Sources
Like many large rural cemeteries of its era, Forest Hill has gathered a local reputation for being atmospheric and, by some accounts, haunted. The setting lends itself to the impression: a 166-acre Gothic Revival landscape of mature trees, ponds, and dense Victorian monuments that takes on an uncanny quality in low light, the same effect the rural cemetery movement deliberately cultivated.
Informal accounts describe a figure seen among the monuments, but these reports circulate through paranormal-listing sites rather than documented investigations or named local sources. No specific identified person, dated incident, or formal paranormal study is attached to the cemetery in the material reviewed.
Because the historical record here is strong while the paranormal claim is thin and carried only by aggregator listings, the entry is held for further review. The cemetery's real draw is its status as 'Utica's outdoor museum' — a National Register landscape whose monuments mark the graves of a vice president, senators, a governor, and a Supreme Court justice, and whose Gothic Revival gatehouse and Hotchkiss-designed grounds reward an unhurried daytime walk.
Walk the rolling, landscaped grounds of an 1850 rural cemetery designed by engineer Almeron Hotchkiss, with a Gothic Revival gatehouse, three ponds, and the monuments of figures including Vice President James S. Sherman, Senator Roscoe Conkling, and Governor Horatio Seymour. The cemetery is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
Forest Park, IL
Forest Home Cemetery in Forest Park, Illinois, grew from two adjacent cemeteries — German Waldheim (established 1873) and Forest Home (1876) — which merged in February 1969. The 220-acre site was chosen as a non-denominational burial ground, a policy that made it the only Chicago-area cemetery willing to accept the bodies of the Haymarket defendants in 1887.
Syracuse, NY
Oakwood Cemetery was dedicated in November 1859 and designed by Howard Daniels, a New York City landscape gardener whose picturesque plan made Oakwood one of the most notable examples of the American rural cemetery movement. Adjacent to what would become Syracuse University, the 160-acre cemetery is the last of Daniels' fifteen rural cemetery designs and remains an active burial ground today.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPSyracuse, NY
Woodlawn Cemetery Association was incorporated in April 1881 to provide a picturesque burial ground for the growing city of Syracuse. The non-denominational, non-profit cemetery spans roughly 160 acres on Grant Boulevard on the city's north side and includes a Civil War memorial section honoring more than 100 soldiers interred there, along with a Sunset Mausoleum Complex for above-ground entombment.