The afternoon was getting long in the tooth in Peoria last Saturday, but I told Ann there was one more place I wanted to go before we proceeded to the highway out of town. Yes, of course, was her mild reaction.

The minor delay was entirely worth it, as far as I was concerned. We soon found ourselves at the entrance to Springdale Cemetery, a wooded, hilly, well-populated stretch of land where gravediggers first turned their shovels in the late 1850s. Roads lead off in various directions through this enormous place, a rare example of a rural cemetery movement cemetery that still retains a rural feeling, even though the city of Peoria is all around.

Springdale isn’t over-thick with stones, though there are plenty. It isn’t thick with sizable memorials, though a few rise over the others.

Deeper in the 223-acre cemetery are rows of soldiers’ stones, beginning with those who fought to save the Union and peppered with later participants in later wars.

Even deeper in, the forest becomes as thick as any I’ve seen in a cemetery. In early April, the trees are still bare, but it won’t be long. The warm air was alive with birdcalls while the din of city traffic — so much part of a “rural cemetery” in our time — was far in the background.

We saw just a handful of mausoleums. I suspect there most be more in other parts of Springdale, since Peoria had a long stint as a prosperous industrial town, and that’s the kind of thing that captains of industry used to buy for themselves. But we only had time for the handful.

Zotz was a German newspaper publisher.  The mausoleum door isn’t original. In fact, it’s a recently created trompe l’oeil.

Nearby were more modest, but still compelling stones. About 78,000 people lie in Springdale.

A gorgeous place, all in all. One that would be worth seeing during the seasons other than spring, I believe.