Elmwood Cemetery Memphis

Memphis was already a growing river city when fifty residents pooled money in 1852 to establish Elmwood Cemetery beyond the town’s edge. They set aside forty acres for a garden cemetery, a landscaped place where families could bury their dead among trees and paths. As Memphis expanded, the cemetery grew with it, becoming a record of the city’s public life as well as a burial ground.

The most painful chapter arrived in 1878, when yellow fever devastated Memphis. Thousands died during the epidemic. At Elmwood, about 1,400 victims were buried in a public section that came to be known as No Man’s Land. Some victims were buried in family plots or elsewhere in the cemetery, but the concentrated graves preserve the scale of the disaster in one stark place.