Sphinxes, stone trees, Cincinnati icons: Exploring Spring Grove Cemetery

Spring Grove is as much an arboretum, history museum, sculpture garden and park as it is an active cemetery. Its miles of roads wind past lakes, mausoleums, unusual trees and the graves of people whose names are still scattered across Cincinnati: Kroger, Graeter, Fleischmann, Moerlein, Shillito and Procter and Gamble among them. Spring Grove Cemetery and Arboretum, located at 4521 Spring Grove Ave., comprises 733 acres and is the second largest cemetery, acreage-wise in the United States. “You could spend all day here,” Spring Grove docent Cheryl Tallman told CityBeat during a recent tour. “I’m a retired math teacher. I used to be a math nerd. Now I’m a history nerd.” Some of the architecture at Spring Grove. Photo by Haley Parnell | CityBeat Spring Grove s story begins amid a less picturesque chapter of Cincinnati history. During the cholera epidemics of the 1830s and 1840s, the city s roughly 25 small, church burial grounds struggled to keep pace with deaths. At the