Cemetery Program

Sacred Ground: Burial Sites in Montgomery County

Montgomery Parks’ Cultural Resources team stewards 16 cemeteries on M-NCPPC managed land – all are open to the public, are sites of on-going research, interpretation, and maintenance, and speak to the history of our county since the 18th century, and perhaps even further.

Burials are found throughout Montgomery County – on old family farms, next to houses of worship, in the woods under intentional plantings of yucca and periwinkle, part of large commercial cemetery operations, and even within 20th-century development. They are as much of our cultural landscape as archaeological sites, buildings, streets and bridges, battlefields, and monuments.

Our cemetery inventory is not final nor complete – many cemeteries have been lost to time for a variety of reasons, such as tombstones have been removed or were never originally used, families sold land and relocated from where their ancestor’s final resting place remains, houses of worship and benevolent societies disbanded, or burials faced displacement due to development, neglect or climate change. While Cultural Resources continues to do research in the hopes of finding any unknown burial site on county land, if you have any clues that could aid us in our pursuit, please contact us. We also welcome all information that pertains to our known cemeteries – archival records, photographs, and oral histories are all valuable tools in helping us tell the lives of the individuals who lie in these sacred spaces.