Benton Park's Lost Cholera Cemetery

A neighborhood park over a landscape shaped by one of St. Louis's deadliest epidemics.

Benton Park's peaceful landscape sits within a neighborhood deeply connected to nineteenth-century disease, burial and the rapid growth of St. Louis.

The Story

Cholera tore through St. Louis repeatedly in the nineteenth century, with the 1849 epidemic killing thousands. The scale and speed of death overwhelmed ordinary burial systems and helped transform how the city thought about cemeteries, sanitation and public space.

The Benton Park area preserves traces of that era in its surrounding institutions and landscape, even where burial grounds and epidemic infrastructure no longer survive visibly. The absence is part of the story: cities routinely built over places associated with disease once their original use disappeared.

What Remains Today

The historic burial landscape is no longer visible as a functioning cemetery. Benton Park is now a public city park surrounded by the residential neighborhood that carries its name.

Visiting Information

Benton Park is publicly accessible. Treat references to former burials as historical context rather than evidence that visible graves remain in the park today.