Crown Hill Cemetery: The City on a Hill (Indianapolis, Indiana)

Crown Hill Cemetery is known as “The City on a Hill.” Situated on the highest point above Indianapolis, Indiana, this jewel of a rural cemetery is the final resting place for more than 200,000 people.

Those include politicians, presidents, mayors, Supreme Court justices, Medal of Honor recipients, artists, architects, writers, publishers, Indy car drivers, freed slaves, fire victims, murder victims, gangsters, first responders, and service personnel.
Crown Hill is also home to two military cemeteries. In National Cemetery, more than 700 Union soldiers were interred in 1866 following the Civil War. Today 2,135 soldiers are buried here, representing every war the United States has taken part in up to and including Viet Nam. Nearby, the Confederate Mound is the final resting place of 1,616 Confederate Prisoners of War, southern soldiers who died while being detained at Camp Morton from 1862 through 1865.


From chiseled tombs to elaborate tree stones, carved memorials to deeply etched shadows on a statue’s face, this book provides an intimate look at the monuments, mausoleums, and markers that tell the secrets and stories of those interred at Crown Hill Cemetery.