Chippiannock Cemetery

Chippiannock Cemetery occupies about 77 sloping acres in southwest Rock Island, Illinois, climbing the western face of a bluff and extending across the plateau above. Landscape engineer Almerin Hotchkiss laid it out in 1855 on former farmland once tied to an American Indian site, and burials began that year. Winding drives follow the contours and create thirteen asymmetrical burial sections, with scenic views within the grounds and toward the Mississippi River. Native groves were supplemented with rare and ornamental trees, and the cemetery now lists over 1,560 trees. Contributing features include the landscape design, a Gothic Revival Sexton's House dating to about 1850, four Classical Revival mausolea and twenty-nine monuments and gravemarkers. Its significance rests on its embodiment of the rural cemetery movement and Hotchkiss's design. A 1985 landscape architecture survey described it as Illinois' oldest designed landscape. Nearly 23,000 people are buried there, and it remains an active cemetery.