Spread across 170 acres, Lexington Cemetery at 833 W. Main Street is a private, non-profit rural cemetery and arboretum. Established in 1848 as a place of beauty and a public cemetery — in part to deal with burials from the 1833 cholera epidemic — this landscape was later linked to the Civil War when what became Lexington National Cemetery was established in 1861 to inter American Civil War casualties. The grounds were designed by Charles S. Bell and John Lutz, and what began as 40 acres has expanded to 170 acres with more than 64,000 interments.
As you walk, notice the plantings: boxwood, cherries, crabapples, dogwoods, magnolias, taxus, and beds of begonias, chrysanthemums, irises, jonquils, lantanas, lilies, and tulips. On the grounds is an American basswood the cemetery claims is the largest in the world, although the National Register of Big Trees names a different largest American basswood in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. Two Confederate monuments were originally built here, including the Confederate Soldier Monument in Lexington Ladies' Confederate Memorial (1874).
Notice the American basswood the cemetery claims as the largest in the world, close to the Confederate Soldier Monument of 1874.