Press "Enter" to skip to content

A cemetery where burial and conservation meet

Even after we draw our final breaths, we human beings often consume a lot of resources. Casket-building, embalming, cemetery construction — each can carry a heavy environmental cost.

Organizers of the area’s first conservation cemetery want to alter that equation. At Bluestem Conservation Cemetery, they’re creating a space that is both a burial site and a nature preserve with ponds, fields, woods and rolling hills. Our reporter Zella Hanson visited Bluestem and brings this report.

Photo by Milena Ozernova — The 9th Street Journal