67 Best Sights in USA

This garden cemetery on the National Registry of Historic Places served as a place of inspiration and a final resting place for American literary greats like Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Each Memorial Day, Alcott's grave is decorated in commemoration of her death.

One block from the entrance to City Park, at the end of Esplanade Avenue, stands this cemetery, on an area of high ground along Bayou St. John. It opened in 1854 on the site of an old leper colony. Governor Galvez had exiled the lepers here during the yellow fever outbreak of 1853, but they were later removed to make room for the dead. The remains of Storyville photographer E. J. Bellocq are here, and the cemetery is notable for its neat rows of elaborate aboveground crypts, mausoleums, and carved stone angels. Many tour companies, including Save Our Cemeteries, offer tours that include St. Louis No. 3, but it's also perfectly safe to walk through and explore on your own.

The current brick church was built in the mid-1800s, and its tall, pointed steeple was added in 1870, but St. Peter's has existed here since 1680. Modified colonial style decorates the interior, colored by 16 stained-glass windows mostly depicting the story of Jesus. Eighteen markers in the churchyard identify significant graves, including those of three Delaware governors.

The city's oldest cemetery is the final resting place of Edgar Allan Poe and other famous Marylanders, including 15 generals from the American Revolution and the War of 1812. Dating from 1786, the cemetery was originally known as the Old Western Burying Grounds. In the early 1850s, a city ordinance demanded that burial grounds be part of a church, so a building was constructed above the cemetery, creating catacombs beneath it. In the 1930s, the schoolchildren of Baltimore collected pennies to raise the necessary funds for Poe's monument. Tours of Westminster Hall (which include the Burying Ground and Catacombs) are offered from April through November every first and third Friday at 6:30 pm and every Saturday at 10 am.

Mark Twain rests in the Langdon family plot, with his daughter Clara and son-in-law, Ossip Gabrilowitsch, at his feet. A 12-foot-tall monument marks the spot (12 feet, in river terminology, is 2 fathoms, or "mark twain," the derivation of Clemens' pen name).

The 133 lush green acres of Woodlawn Memorial Park have served as the final resting space for generations of Nashvillians, including many major country music stars whose grave sites are open for visits from tour groups or individuals. Among those buried in Woodlawn are George Jones, Tammy Wynette, Felice and Boudleaux Bryant, Little Jimmy Dickens, Jerry Reed, Webb Pierce, Johnny Paycheck, Marty Robbins, and Porter Wagoner. The beautiful Lynn Anderson Rose Garden pays homage to the late-great songstress and her greatest hit.

Dead artists of all kinds reside here: poets, musicians, writers, painters, sculptors, dancers, and bon vivants. Many of the stones, in keeping with the wishes of their buried subjects, tell artfully rendered stories. Look for the grassy knoll behind the Evergreen Cemetery to commune with the spirits of Woodstock.