Alta Vista Cemetery

Alta Vista Cemetery is the principal municipal burial ground for Gainesville and Hall County, Georgia. Gainesville bought 9.25 acres southwest of downtown in 1872, and the grounds later grew to about 80 acres, with roughly 35 acres in the listed district. Rolling lawns shaded by oak, magnolia and cedar hold blocks divided into family plots, many edged with brick, stone or cast-iron fences. Monuments include obelisks, zinc markers, Woodmen of the World tree stumps and two Art Deco marble mausoleums. The cemetery also received graves moved from church cemeteries and from the area flooded by Lake Lanier in the 1950s. It contains a segregated African-American section and separate potter's fields for white and Black unmarked burials, and segregation ended in the late 1950s. Burials include a Confederate general, two Georgia governors and a Black physician, Emmett E. Butler. The listing covers the period from 1872 to 1965, when adjacent Woodlawn Cemetery was added.