Late in the afternoon on the last day of July, I visited Forest Hill Cemetery in Duluth. I didn’t explore it as well as I might have. I’ve since read that there’s a “millionaire’s row” of mausoleums that I completely missed.
Ah, well. C’est la mort. Forest Hill Cemetery has a pleasant setting in the hilly land toward the northeastern edge of the city. When founded in 1890, Forest Hill wasn’t in the city, but part of the rural cemetery movement — a fairly late entry, since the movement had kicked off more than 50 years earlier.
Maybe that helps account for the relative lack of funerary art so beloved by Victorians. Or maybe the cemetery is characteristic of Minnesota reserve. Anyway, mostly it’s headstones. Parts are lightly forested.
There are slopes, which is characteristic of much of Duluth.Whoever Carl Nelson was, gone these 60-plus years, he still seems to get visitors.
Nearby, Clarence R. Nelson has a fair number of stones as well. His headstone says he was a sergeant in WWII, with the only date given being Oct. 20, 1942, presumably his death.
One of the few statues that I saw. A somber Jesus overlooks a melancholy section called Babyland.
Which includes such residents as baby Ella.
Elsewhere is a small set of columbaria, complete with a small praying hands (diminutive compared to these in Tulsa, which I saw back in ’09).
Not sure I’d want my memorial quite so close to a parking lot. Oddly, a road would be OK, at least a lightly traveled one like in a cemetery. But it’s a matter of de gustibus non est disputandum anyway.