The Oakland Cemetery is a huge wooded green space in the heart of the city, with the Atlanta skyline as its backdrop. Since 1850, an estimated 70,000 people have been buried among the oak and magnolia trees of this graveyard, including rich and poor Atlanta settlers, Atlanta’s first African American mayor and many other mayors, local Christians and Jews, and famous and unknown soldiers.
The Victorian-style cemetery covers 48 acres (19.4 hectares), so first drop in at the Visitor Center in the monumental Bell Tower Building to grab a map. On July 22, 1864, General John B. Hood steered his Confederate army in the Battle of Atlanta from this very funeral parlor. The building now houses the offices of the Historic Oakland Foundation. Since the cemetery was spared during the Battle of Atlanta, it has some of the city’s oldest structures.
Start your cemetery tour with the original plots by the main entrance. Look for the eroded gravestone of Dr. James Nissen, the first person to be interred in the Oakland Cemetery in September 1850. The grave with golf balls marks the spot where the Atlanta golfer Robert Tyre "Bobby" Jones was buried in 1902.
In the Confederate section of the cemetery, gaze up at the Our Confederate Dead obelisk from 1874 and the solid marble Lion of the Confederacy. The dying lion sculpture with Rebel flag marks a mass grave of thousands of unidentified Confederate soldiers who died during the Battle of Atlanta.
Don’t miss the final resting place of a local developer named Jasper “Jack” Newton Smith, who died in 1918. So he would never be forgotten, Jack had a seated statue of himself placed above the entrance of his granite mausoleum.
The park-like cemetery is an idyllic final resting place, but it is far from the “dead end of town.” Annual events in the cemetery include Halloween tours, Sunday in the Park and the Tunes from the Tombs music festival.
The Oakland Cemetery in East Side, Atlanta is open daily from dawn to dusk and free to access. Metered parking spots are available nearby. If traveling by public transportation, take the MARTA line to the King Memorial station and walk one block to the left.
