Highland Memory Gardens' memorial park-style became a model for cemeteries across the country in the decades that followed its founding. Now nearly every community has duplicated this style of cemetery with only flat bronze memorials and no upright monuments to interfere with the expansive grounds of green grass, flower gardens, hedges and ornamental trees.
In 1935, Des Moines philanthropist F.W. Fitch is credited with the survival of the cemetery through its difficult early days. Mr. Fitch envisioned a beautiful tower which would play chimes and music and offer a peaceful chapel to visitors of the cemetery, as well as a tower to serve as a landmark for the community. Thus the Tower of Memories became the central feature of the gardens.