Elmwood Cemetery, established in 1846, is one of Detroit and Michigan’s most significant sites of history, culture and landscape. Designed and maintained as part of the rural cemetery movement, Elmwood sits on 86 acres of rolling hills, majestic trees and a historic waterway, all in the heart of the city, just two miles from downtown Detroit.
Located on land that was once part of a ribbon farm, the cemetery’s founding trustees were attracted to its “picturesque situation” and especially the creek that wound through the property, part of a historic waterway known as Bloody Run. The creek got its macabre nickname after a battle in 1763 during Chief Pontiac's uprising against the British in which an alliance of Native American fighters defeated a force of British soldiers who had tried to surprise Pontiac's encampment in an overnight ambush. The creek was said to have run red with the blood of fallen British soldiers. Today, Elmwood is the only place in Detroit to see Bloody Run, which is now largely underground and part of the city’s sewer system.
1860 map of the City of Detroit showing the path of Bloody Run creek southward through the central city, through the cemetery, and to the riverfront, nearer to the site of the Battle of Bloody Run. The entire creek, except through the cemetery, is underground today.
Elmwood is also one of the few places in Detroit where visitors can get a sense of what the city’s topography might have looked like before widespread street grading – a landscape of swells, dales, banks and groves. Many trees on our grounds grew here long before the cemetery was even imagined. In this way, Elmwood is a place where you can see, quite literally, over 300 years of Detroit history.
Architectural treasures of the cemetery include our 1856 Gothic chapel building designed by Albert Jordan, our 1870 Gothic gatehouse designed by Gordon W. Lloyd, and our public mausoleums, one built in 1895 by Nehemiah Hinsdale and another build in 1994 by Harley, Ellington, Pierce & Yee. On our grounds you'll also find mausoleums and monuments by Marshall Fredericks, Randolph Rogers, Rudulph Evans, Mary Chase Perry Stratton, Mason & Rice, the Cartwright Brothers, and Carlo Romanelli, among countless others.
Elmwood is also one of the oldest racially integrated cemeteries in Michigan – a place that tells an internationally significant story of freedom, from an enslaved soldier who fought in the Revolutionary War to the first Black mayor of Detroit and the founder of the world’s largest African American history museum. It is the final resting place of abolitionists and Underground Railroad organizers, notable figures in Civil War and Reconstruction history, and countless barrier breaking Black political, cultural, social, religious and Civil Rights leaders. Elmwood's importance to the story of freedom in the U.S. was recognized by the National Parks Service in 2019 when it was named a site of significance on the National Network to Freedom.
Michigan's oldest Jewish cemetery, Temple Beth El's Lafeyette Street Cemetery, is also on our grounds.
Elmwood's landscape design
Elmwood was Detroit’s first "rural cemetery" – a model pioneered in the United States in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Mount Auburn Cemetery was established in 1831. These large park-like cemeteries were often laid out at the edge of a city, providing a “rural” setting for residents to escape the crowds and dust of urbanity and retreat into nature.
Rural cemeteries were always intended to be used for respite and recreation and not just as burial space. In fact, they were the prototypes for America’s first large public parks and greenspaces. Elmwood, for example, predates the city’s purchase of Belle Isle for use as a park by about 30 years.
In 1890, the Trustees of Elmwood Cemetery hired celebrated landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted to tour the grounds and recommend a plan for preserving the cemetery's "rural" character – a now-historic effort to look 100+ years into the cemetery’s future. (You can read Olmsted's suggestions for Elmwood here.)
“There is no reason why Elmwood should not … come gradually to be a place of permanent value to the people of Detroit as a retreat from the streets and buildings and bustle of the town,” Olmsted wrote in his report, advising the Trustees to preserve the rural character of the cemetery and the natural features of the landscape so that future Detroiters might be able to take “sequestered walks” under “the shade of ancient trees.” The cemetery’s designation as a certified Arboretum in 2015 is a testament to the success of that 125-year plan.
Elmwood remains an active cemetery today as well as a vibrant site of Detroit history, culture, and nature.
Explore and learn more about Elmwood's history
- Peruse our biographies of notable people buried at Elmwood
- Download one of our self-guided tours, or pick one up next time you're in the office
- Check out our calendar of tours and events
- Sign up for our e-newsletter to keep up with news and events
Elmwood is supported by the Historic Elmwood Foundation, established in 2005 to bring activity to the grounds and develop programs that benefit the community. Learn more about the foundation and how to support our work here.
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