Acacia Park Cemetery

Beautiful Cemetery on the banks of the Mississippi River!

Stunningly park like setting. No upright monuments, all flat footstones. Wildlife everywhere; wild turkeys, deer, raptors, etc. Started in the late 1920's, Acacia Park Cemetery is located adjacent to the original river pilots landmark, Pilot Knob. 75 acres on the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi River, Acacia Park Cemetery is open to all.

Lovely grounds that make up much of historic Pilot Knob. It's flanked by a park that is getting constant rehabilitation. There are lots of wild turkeys and deer that roam the hill. It's a landmark when across the river or Mendota Bridge. At the base of the cemetery, there's a path and 13 which has minimal noise. I'm usually in the vicinity weekly and it's consistently nice and scenic.

In stark contrast to the calming grounds, I'd picked that place for my mother years back, because it was close to our family home where she was happiest. My octogenarian grandmother, my father, sister and I went over to pick out a plot. We'd been apparently slow to decide or didn't fully understand the process, but abruptly when making arrangements the General Manager, Dale Bachmeier said we needed to get moving shortly and rudely because he "had dinner waiting at home" and "didn't have all day" and elaborating something to the effect of having plans and family waiting on him. We hadn't gotten any notable time conflict cues prior, but perhaps we'd missed something. Granted, we might have been moving slow per my grandmother. On the way to visit the areas, we were shell-shocked from my mother's sudden passing, as well Bachmeier's behavior but moved along. We visited a few spots, trying to be a little sharper in our decision-making and moving. I think my grandmother didn't get out of the car to speed the process along. We'd said we liked one, but I don't think that was emphasized enough or wasn't clear we had more to do. We returned to the office and Bachmeier said something effect about he was needing to do something inside, and (literally) ran in (I think one of us might had joking suggested he needed to go to the bathroom.) A minute or so later he burst out with the site map in hand and yelled "You want to do this out here! We can pick a plot on the goddamn ground!" and got on the ground with the map and was thrashing it around. He had lost it. It was a real display. There may have been a miscommunication, but something was apparently wrong with this man. I still can't believe this happened years later. (It's on par with Ferris Bueller's principal asking him to "produce a corpse" to get his girlfriend out of school–however this was real life.) My focus for the moment was that I wanted this to be my mother's resting place and to persist. It's something I think about every time I visit, but I am still glad we laid her to rest there. My father did pass along comments to the funeral home (not affiliated), but I think we'd all had plenty to deal with at the time so that was the last of it.

And on a very minor note compared to the previous story, on a winter with limited snowfall, most of it melting off middle-end of February, Christmas wreaths are still up early April. It's sort of a sad scene. I believe they promise 30 days before removal, so maybe it's an oversight.