Please be advised this cache is in an active cemetery. No grave markers need be disturbed. The cemetery is open 7 days a week. April 1 through October 31 it is open from 7am to 8pm. November 1 through March 31 it is open from 7am to 6pm. As always please be respectful of visitors and residents of the cemetery.
We were in the area finding the last two caches we hadn't found in our winter cache run in this cemetery. We found them fairly quickly and had time to see where we might fit in two more. This cache is not a typical cemetery cache hide. The second is in a normal hiding spot.
From the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History:
CALVARY CEMETERY, which straddles the Cleveland-GARFIELD HEIGHTS border, was established in the 1890s due to the growing need for a new and extensive burial ground for Catholics in the Cleveland area. For many years it was the largest Catholic cemetery in Ohio. The original purchase, of approx. 105 acres, was in Oct. 1893, and included the Leland farm as well as the Turner and McConnell allotment. Work began immediately on laying out the cemetery. Mr. F. Rurich, a civil and topographical engineer, then superintendent of Woodlawn Cemetery in Toledo, plotted the land. Three sections for single graves and a receiving vault were opened. An unblessed section was also set aside "for burials among mixed-marriage" groups. The cemetery was dedicated on 26 Nov. 1893.
The first plot sold was to Vaclva Ausperk, for $96. The first burials in the cemetery were those of a husband and wife, John and Catherine Hogan, who died on the same day and were buried on 1 Dec. 1893. The largest number of interments occurred in Nov. 1918, during a flu epidemic. In that month there were 985 burials, with a peak of 81 in one day, on 4 Nov. By the early 1990s, the average number of burials was 1300 a year (about five a day). A central administration building for all Catholic cemeteries in the Cleveland diocese was constructed in 1986 just inside the entrance to Calvary Cemetery. Additional parcels of land were acquired over time. As of Sept. 1994, Calvary Cemetery covered 302 acres, and there had been 290,665 burials. Prominent Clevelanders buried in the cemetery include FRANK LAUSCHE†, STELLA WALSH†, and GENE CARROLL†.