Orton Park occupies 1100 Spaight Street, Madison's first public park. This small public park was not always green: the land was designated as a public cemetery in 1846, the same year Madison was chartered as a village. Madison quickly outgrew the burial ground, and by the 1850s the Common Council was already looking for a larger site.
In 1877 the graves here were moved to Forest Hill Cemetery, and a decade later the site officially opened as a park in 1887 — Madison's first public park. It was named for Wisconsin Supreme Court justice Harlow S. Orton, though other ideas for the parcel once included a beer garden and even a hospital. From its opening the park has been a neighborhood focal point: early gatherings were concerts and ice cream socials, and more recently the space hosts a farmer's market and a neighborhood festival.
The park and the surrounding Orton Park Historic District are recognized on the National Register of Historic Places; the park itself was added on December 18, 1978. Graves lay under this grass until 1877, and by 1887 Madison's first public park had opened over them.