The Cemetery Train, Spring Grove Cemetery, Cincinnati, Ohio

Before we begin, I would like to thank Debbie Brandt and the docents at Spring Grove Cemetery, Steve Headley with the Cincinnati Public Library, Phil Lind and Jefferey Jakucyk (Jakowic) for their research and photos used in this film. Without their help, this documentary never would have happened.

Spring Grove Cemetery is the second largest cemetery in the United States. Although we could do several videos on these 750 historic acres, today we are going to focus solely on what I call “The Cemetery Train”.

Spring Grove Cemetery was established in 1845 with the first internment commencing that year. Shortly thereafter the Cincinnati, Hamilton & Dayton Railroad began building their rail line from Cincinnati North to Hamilton. The projected railroad right of way was to go through the newly established cemetery. For more information about this particular railroad, please see the link below.

The cemetery board fought to keep the rail line from coming through, but to no avail. Having a train rambling through a cemetery bisecting a funeral procession would be inconvenient at best. Plans were made to build a stone arch bridge over the main road leading into the cemetery grounds as to not disrupt a funeral when a train was heading north or south.

Apparently the first stone arch bridge built by the rail company in the 1850s was a Roman Arch as depicted in this illustration showing Spring Grove in 1858.

The current overpass featuring an elliptical arch was built in 1883 most probably to allow for 2 way traffic coming in and out of the cemetery grounds.

Trains used this line going through the cemetery until the late 1980s. When usage stopped, Spring Grove bought up the right of way and removed the tracks by the late 1990s. If you have any photos of trains traveling through the cemetery, please let me know in the comments below.

One very interesting item that I’ve found on the bridge is a high water mark! To the right near the top of the stone wall as you approach the bridge from the front gates, you’ll see a line etched into the stone along with the date: March 21, 1882. One of the docents at Spring Grove found this newspaper article stating that heavy rains fell in that area with some railroad bridges between Cincinnati and Lebanon being washed away. Who knew!

GPS Location: 39º09’56.6″N 84º31’25.0″W