Oak Hill Memorial Park

Oak Hill Memorial Park is a cemetery in San Jose, California, United States. Founded in 1847, it is the oldest secular cemetery in California.^[1] Oak Hill is the northernmost hill in the San Juan Bautista Hills of South San Jose.^[2]

Oak Hill Memorial Park
The Great Mausoleum on top of Oak Hill
Details
Established	1847
Location	San Jose, California
Country	United States
Coordinates	37°17′56″N 121°51′37″W
Owned by	Dignity Memorial
Size	300 acres
No. of interments	>40,000
Website	Official website
Find a Grave	Oak Hill Memorial Park

History

Rotunda of the Great Mausoleum.

Fountain of the Apostles.

The cemetery's origins date back to 1839, during the Mexican period of California, when city officials of the Pueblo de San José de Guadalupe began to bury the dead on the northern side of the San Juan Bautista Hills, in modern-day South San Jose.^[3][4][5] It was known simply as the Pueblo Graveyard.^[5]

In 1847, following the American Conquest of California, surveyor Chester Lyman, along with William Fisher of Rancho Laguna Seca, laid out an official city cemetery on a nearby tract, which was simply known as the Pueblo Cemetery, until 1858, when it was renamed to Oak Hill Cemetery (Oak Hill being the northernmost hill of the San Juan Bautista Hills where the cemetery is laid out).^[3][5]

When the city sold the cemetery to A.J. Hocking in 1933, its name was changed for the final time to Oak Hill Memorial Park.^[3][5] The Hocking family's tenure of ownership of the cemetery was marked by the construction of new mausoleums, notably the Azalea and Parkview Terraces, as well as the construction of the Fountain of the Apostles and the Chapel of the Oaks.^[3] In 1986, Oak Hill was finally sold to Dignity Memorial.

Landmarks

The Community Mausoleum.

Chapel of Roses.

The Great Mausoleum is the most notable landmark at Oak Hill. It built in a historic Romanesque Spanish Revival architecture.

The Sunrise Hill Cross is located atop of Sunrise Hill, the small summit just next to Oak Hill.

The Fountain of the Apostles features twelve marble statues of the Apostles of Christ surrounding the inner font.

The cemetery has an Overland Pioneers Memorial to early American settlers of the Santa Clara Valley.

There is a plot dedicated to members of the Grand Army of the Republic.^[6]

Notable interments

The Japanese Columbarium.

Fountain of the Apostles.

Gardens of the Great Mausoleum.

Private mausoleums with the Sunrise Hill Cross in the background.

Numerous notable persons are interred at Oak Hill:

• Charles Herman Allen, educator, principal of San Jose State University
• Richard Amory (1927–1981), writer, author of Song of the Loon (1966)
• Frank Arellanes (1882–1918), baseball player
• Esto Bates Broughton (1890–1956), one of the first four women elected to the California State Assembly
• Sylvia Browne (1936–2013), self-proclaimed psychic medium
• Earl Butler, founder of Butler Amusements
• Hal Chase (1883–1947), baseball player
• John Smith Chipman (1800–1869), U.S. Congressman
• Sara J. Dorr (1855–1924), temperance activist
• Bernice C. Downing (1878–1940), the first women in California to publish their own newspaper, the Santa Clara Journal^[7]
• Nellie Blessing Eyster (1836–1922), writer and social reformer
• Arthur M. Free (1879–1953), U.S. Congressman
• Elizabeth Eleanor D’Arcy Gaw (1868–1944), artist
• Levi Goodrich (1822–1887), architect
• Brooke Hart (1911–1933), kidnapping and murder victim (son of businessman Alexander Hart)
• Everis Anson Hayes (1855–1942), U.S. Congressman
• Ren Kelly (1899–1963), baseball player
• Sarah Knox-Goodrich (1825–1903), women's rights activist
• Sarah Massey Overton (1850–1914), African-American and women's rights activist
• William Penn Lyon (1822–1913), Chief Justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, Civil War General (Union)
• Paul Masson (1859–1940), early California vintner
• Charles Henry McKiernan (1825–1892), early settler in the Santa Cruz Mountains
• John McNaught (1849–1938), early journalist and writer
• Emelie Melville (1852–1932), American actress
• Norman Mineta (1931–2022), United States Secretary of Transportation
• José Noriega (1796–1869), Alcalde of San José
• Benjamin Raborg (1871–1918), American artist
• James F. Reed (1800–1874), organizing member of the Donner Party
• Lester Reiff (1877–1948), jockey
• Fred Sanborn (1899–1961), Vaudeville performer
• Samuel Morgan Shortridge (1861–1952), U.S. Senator
• Eugene T. Sawyer (1846–1924), newspaper editor and writer of the Nick Carter detective series
• Edward O. Smith (1817–1892), Mayor of Decatur, Illinois, Illinois State Senator, and California pioneer^[8]
• John Townsend (?–1850), early Alcalde of San Francisco
• Gus Triandos (1930–2013), baseball player
• Edward Alexander Walker (1864–1946), Medal of Honor recipient for service in the Boxer Rebellion
• Carrie Stevens Walter (1846–1907), poet and co-founder of the Sempervirens Club
• Byron Daniel Bernstein (1989 – 2020), professional World of Warcraft player, Twitch Streamer

Gallery

• 
  Márquez mausoleum
• 
  View of Downtown San Jose from Oak Hill
• 
  Backesto mausoleum
• 
• 
  Private mausoleums
• 
  The Hillside Mausoleum

See also

• List of cemeteries in California