With a landscape straight from the pages of Washington Irving’s classic novel, the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery spreads for nearly 90 acres of picturesque New York hillside. With history older then the nation itself, the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery possesses some of the oldest and rarest examples of burial traditions of century’s past.

The Old Dutch Church and Burial Ground,located at the entrance to this resting place, is certainly the oldest section of the graveyard. The church which was built in the late 1680’s is surrounded by grave sites of similar age, some even older. This site proved to be quite the inspiration to Washington Irving, who used some of its interred residents as characters in his grim novel “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”.

The Sleepy Hollow Cemetery is a remarkable time line, where you can see the constantly changing views on death and mourning. Each century is distinct, in a style of headstones that rang from simple to extravagant. And while some are mournful others are jubilant. Some of those laid to rest here are : Revolutionary and Civil war soldiers, Samuel Gompers, Andrew Carnegie, Mark Hellinger, Major Edward Bowes, William Rockefeller, Walter Chrysler, and Elizabeth Arden. Even Washington Irving himself is entombed here.

The cemetery gates are open Monday through Friday from 8:00 AM to 4:30 PM, Saturday and Sunday from 8:30 AM to 4:30 PM.

-GhastlyG :June 2007