It’s rare that you come across a cemetery this well-loved. Around here, cemeteries are clean, lawns are watered and mowed regularly, and a caretaker cleans up old grave decorations.  But I’ve never seen a cemetery like this one.  As soon as I laid eyes on it, I knew that I would get some good pictures, even though I was using my cell phone. I didn’t expect to get a panoramic view that I could use for my header photo, but as you can clearly see, it worked out great.  Here’s another panorama:

I don’t think Springville Cemetery  always looked this good.  I can imagine it overgrown with weeds, and tombstones knocked over and used for target practice by rambunctious kids.  Now it is completely fenced and cleaned up, but the oldest tombstones needed rescuing. Some, beyond repair, were rescued anyway:

Others of the oldest tombstones have been completely replaced with monuments and slabs that look more like some of my blog posts:

Here’s another replacement. This woman died at 30 years old, but the information on the bench shows a difficult life.  She may have died young, but I think she was just plain worn out:

This new tombstone on an old grave pays homage to a fallen officer of the law:

Some families:

 

Some soldiers who died in the Blackhawk War:

There is a monument to servicemen, but by the time I got to it, it was too dark to get good pictures.  I think I’ll save monuments to fallen soldiers for a Memorial Day post.

And one last close-up of some Springville graves: