Aerial survey · USDA NAIP · public domainThe first burial ground of Cedarburg's Trinity Lutheran congregation, now a small city park with a single consolidated 1877 monument bearing the recovered names of those buried there
Evergreen Boulevard, Cedarburg, WI 53012
Research updated May 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free public park
Access
Wheelchair OK
Small flat city park with grass and short paths.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1850 · First Trinity Lutheran burial ground in Cedarburg · Pre-1877 consolidated cemetery monument · Stop on Cedarburg ghost tour
Cedarburg was settled primarily by German immigrants beginning in the 1840s, and the Trinity Lutheran congregation established the burial ground that became Founder's Park as one of the community's first cemeteries. The original headstones — many of which were modest fieldstones or small inscribed markers — deteriorated rapidly in the Wisconsin climate.
Sometime before 1877, the townspeople removed the surviving individual headstones and erected a single consolidated monument bearing the recoverable names of those buried at the site. The original headstones were not preserved. According to local historical records collected by the Cedarburg Cultural Center and Ozaukee County genealogical sources, small unmarked fieldstones still mark some grave locations within the park's lawn.
The site is now a small Cedarburg city park.
Sources
Local tradition collected by Cedarburg paranormal researcher Chad Lewis and several Cedarburg ghost-tour operators holds that the pre-1877 consolidation of headstones — and the loss of individual graves' physical markers — disturbed the rest of the dead at the site. Reports from visitors over the past several decades include localized cold spots in specific patches of the park, even on warm sunny days, and a sense of presence or being watched, particularly near the central monument.
The site is a small public park, not a fenced or interpretive cemetery, and accounts are best understood as part of Cedarburg's folklore corpus rather than as documented investigations.
Media Appearances
Brief visit to the small city park, with the consolidated stone monument bearing recovered names of those buried in the original Trinity Lutheran cemetery. Several Cedarburg ghost tour operators include the site on evening walking tours.
Commercial walking tours of Cedarburg's historic district include Founder's Park as a regular stop alongside other downtown sites.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
Mobile, AL
Cathedral Square occupies part of Mobile's 18th-century Catholic Campo Santo cemetery, a roughly 400-by-300-foot burial ground spanning portions of city blocks between Joachim, Dauphin, Franklin, and Conti Streets. Most burials were moved to the new Church Street Graveyard in 1819 when Mobile's city limits expanded, but additional remains continued to surface along Conti Street as late as the 1890s. The blocks were filled with buildings through most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries before being demolished in 1979 to create the public park facing the Cathedral Basilica.
Mobile, AL
Church Street Graveyard opened in 1819 as Mobile's first municipal burial ground, replacing the smaller churchyard at the Catholic cathedral. The four-acre walled cemetery operated until 1898 and was Mobile's principal burial ground through the antebellum period.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPSalem, OR
Salem Pioneer Cemetery was established in 1853 by Chemeketa Lodge No. 1 of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows on a 16-acre site at the intersection of South Commercial Street and Hoyt Street. Earliest burials center on Methodist missionary David Leslie, whose Methodist Mission predated permanent Oregon settlement, and the grounds include Oregon's first congressional delegate Samuel R. Thurston, pioneer Tabitha Moffatt Brown, Governor John P. Gaines, and approximately 8,000 burials in total. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 11, 2013 under its historic name 'Odd Fellows Rural Cemetery' (reference #13000707). The City of Salem Parks Division has held title since 1985.