Mount Hope Cemetery
Mount Hope Cemetery opened as Lansing's new city cemetery in June 1874 on what was formerly the John Miller Farm. Between 1874 and 1881 the city vacated the Lansing City Cemetery, located on the site of what would become Oak Park, and moved roughly one thousand graves to Mount Hope. Frederick W. Higgins, superintendent of Detroit's Woodmere Cemetery, planned the drives, and Henry Lee Bancroft, Lansing cemetery superintendent and director of parks and recreation from 1914 to 1957, developed the landscape over many years. The rolling terrain, curving drives, and variety and profusion of monuments reflect cemetery concepts of the mid-nineteenth century. A large obelisk, the city's Civil War soldier's monument was dedicated in 1878 on one of the highest points in the cemetery.