Encyclopedia Dubuque
"Encyclopedia Dubuque is the online authority for all things Dubuque, written by the people who know the city best.”
Marshall Cohen—researcher and producer, CNN
Affiliated with the Local History Network of the State Historical Society of Iowa, and the Iowa Museum Association.
MOUNT OLIVET CEMETERY
MOUNT OLIVET CEMETERY. Originally the Key West Burying Ground, the cemetery was renamed in April 1901. The Mt. Olivet Cemetery Association, led by a board of eleven trustees, was given the responsibility of removing bodies from the THIRD STREET CEMETERY behind ST. RAPHAEL'S CATHEDRAL to the new cemetery. If funds were available, a monument dedicated to the Catholic pioneers of Dubuque was to be erected after the grounds were leveled, planted, and laid out with sidewalks. Perpetual care at Mt. Olivet was available in 1903 for eighty dollars.
In 1901 O. C. Simmonds, superintendent of Graceland Cemetery in Chicago and a widely recognized landscape gardener, was hired to improve the cemetery grounds. The cemetery had previously been inaccessible to anyone not walking.
By Memorial Day, May 1903, over one hundred vehicles drove into the cemetery for the first time. Visitors found that shade trees and shrubs had been planted. A new feature noticed by many was that graves located in the pauper's field were kept up as well as those in the rest of the cemetery.