Aerial survey · USDA NAIP · public domainBartlesville's principal municipal cemetery — more than 12,000 burials, a 15,000-square-foot Greek Neoclassical mausoleum with white marble and bronze gates, and a documented reputation as one of northeast Oklahoma's most persistently haunted grounds.
1020 S Johnstone Ave, Bartlesville, OK 74003
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Public cemetery; no admission fee. Open during daylight hours.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Paved paths through much of the cemetery grounds; some uneven terrain near older sections.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1900 · Bartlesville's principal municipal cemetery with over 12,000 burials · Hugh Bryant's 15,000-square-foot Greek Neoclassical mausoleum with white marble and bronze gates · Reflects the social history of Bartlesville's oil-boom growth period · Documented in Rita Cook's 'Haunted Bartlesville, Oklahoma' (History Press) as primary paranormal site
White Rose Cemetery at 1020 South Johnstone Avenue has served as Bartlesville's primary municipal burial ground since the city's incorporation and now holds more than 12,000 burials. Bartlesville grew rapidly in the early twentieth century on the strength of oil discoveries that made it home to Phillips Petroleum and other energy enterprises, and the cemetery's population reflects the full range of that boom — oil workers, company executives, merchants, and the families of each.
The cemetery's most architecturally significant structure is the mausoleum built by Hugh Bryant, a local merchant. The building covers approximately 15,000 square feet in a Greek Neoclassical style, with white marble lining the interior walls and bronze gates at the entrance. It stands as one of the most ambitious funerary structures in Washington County and draws visitors interested in the cemetery's architecture independent of any paranormal dimension.
The City of Bartlesville maintains White Rose Cemetery through its Parks and Recreation Department, and the official city website hosts a dedicated page for the cemetery's history and services. The grounds are open to the public during daylight hours.
Rita Cook's 'Haunted Bartlesville, Oklahoma,' published by History Press, identifies White Rose Cemetery as a primary paranormal site for the Bartlesville area, documenting community tradition around the cemetery's reputation that has accumulated over generations of burials.
Sources
White Rose Cemetery's paranormal reputation is documented in Rita Cook's 'Haunted Bartlesville, Oklahoma,' in which Cook describes the grounds as a place where many of the buried appear to have lingered. The book, published by History Press as part of its regional haunted-America series, draws on local tradition and Cook's own research into Bartlesville's ghost history to establish the cemetery as one of the area's primary dark tourism sites.
The cemetery's sheer scale — more than 12,000 interments across grounds that include sections dating to the city's earliest years — means it contains the full range of human endings that a community accumulates over more than a century: accidents, epidemics, violent deaths, and ordinary deaths of age. Bartlesville's oil-boom history brought transient workers into a rapidly changing city, and the cemetery holds many of them.
Specific apparition accounts are not detailed in the sources reviewed for this entry beyond the general Cook documentation; the cemetery's reputation appears to rest primarily on its age, its scale, and its identification in a published work of regional history rather than on a catalog of individual ghost reports. The Hugh Bryant mausoleum, with its marble and bronze interior, provides an atmospheric centerpiece that investigators and visitors describe as among the most imposing enclosed spaces on the grounds.
Notable Entities
Explore over 12,000 burial sites including the Hugh Bryant mausoleum — a 15,000-square-foot Greek Neoclassical structure with white marble interiors and bronze gates. The mausoleum is one of the most architecturally significant funerary structures in northeast Oklahoma.
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Historic Oakland Cemetery was chartered in 1850 as the six-acre 'Atlanta Cemetery,' renamed Oakland in 1872, and expanded to 48 acres. Approximately 70,000 people are interred, including roughly 6,900 Confederate soldiers (3,000 unidentified), four Confederate generals, six Georgia governors, 27 Atlanta mayors, Margaret Mitchell, golfer Bobby Jones, and Maynard Jackson, Atlanta's first African American mayor. The cemetery was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on April 28, 1976.
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