Mountain View Cemetery

Mountain View Cemetery

Photo by OrcaFin, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=35891928

Quick Facts

Location:

440 Normal Ave. Ashland, OR

Designation:

National Register of Historic Places

Mountain View Cemetery was established by the City of Ashland as an area of 10 acres in the city's southeasterly outskirts in 1904. The cemetery is planted with grass, and mature trees (both native and introduced specimens) provide a relatively dense canopy over much of the burial ground. Headstones placed before 1910 exhibit the same characteristics as those in Ashland and Hargadine cemeteries, while the majority placed between 1910 and 1925 are less elaborate, with a variety of rough-cut or polished granite headstones having flat and beveled tops. Ornamentation is simpler--primarily incised floral designs and fraternal symbols. The Ashland Memorial Mausoleum is located in the portion of the cemetery located south of Highway 66. The Egyptian style building was constructed in 1924 on land purchased from the Ashland IOOF Lodge #45. Its interior includes a chapel, vestibule, and wings that project from the center; a large stained glass window in the chapel is the work of the Povey Brothers Company of Portland. Among those buried in the mausoleum are J. P. Dodge, Alice Applegate Peil and Emil Peil, and Henry G. Enders. 

This cemetery represents the city's effort to accommodate the community's need for burial ground following explosive growth between 1880 and 1910, an expansive period ushered in by the completion of the last link of the Oregon and California Railroad route between Sacramento and Portland. It is significant as the town's only example of a historic garden cemetery laid out and landscaped in tune with the garden and lawn cemetery movement which originated in Boston, New York, Philadelphia and leading centers of the upper Midwest in the 19th century. While Mountain View cemetery contains the last remains of pioneer settlers, its date of establishment and the fact that it was fashionable made it the last resting place of leaders of Ashland's great period of building after the railroad link was established in 1887. Mountain View Cemetery is an example of an early 20th-century cemetery associated with citizens of that period and provides a link between Ashland's initial settlement and post-World War II development. Additional land for the cemetery was acquired in 1904, 1921, 1922 and 1932 to comprise a total of approximately 17 acres.

Mountain View Cemetery, 440 Normal Ave., is open to the public.

Discover more Oregon history by visiting the Ashland, OR travel itinerary.