Unlike earlier burial grounds in Boston, Mount Auburn Cemetery was founded in 1831 by Bostonians for their use, but it was located about four miles west of the city. It was the country's first large-scale designed landscape open to the public.
1. Locate Boston. What limited the city's ability to expand?
2. Find the location of Mount Auburn Cemetery (denoted by a black star) on this map drawn in 1830. Why did Bostonians need a cemetery outside of the city limits?
3. From the evidence you see on the map, how is the area where the cemetery is located different from downtown Boston? How might those differences have contributed to the decision to build a cemetery in that location?
4. Since the automobile was not invented until the last decade of the 19th century, and a public horse-drawn trolley to Mount Auburn was not established until the 1840s, how might a resident of Boston have traveled to Mount Auburn in the first decade after its founding in 1831?
* The map on this screen has a resolution of 72 dots per inch (dpi), and therefore will print poorly. You can obtain a larger version of Map 1, but be aware that the file may take as much as 50 seconds to load with a 28.8K modem.