Nelson Memorial Park
DESCRIPTION OF HISTORIC PLACE
Nelson Memorial Park is a 5.6 hectare cemetery located at the top of Falls Street in Nelson, B.C.
HERITAGE VALUE
Nelson Memorial Park is valued for its aesthetic and spiritual values and as an important open space in the city.
Established in 1898 on 16 hectares of land purchased from the Coumbia-Kootenay Railway Company (a subsidiary of the Canadian Pacific Railway) to create a permanent public cemetery site, Nelson Memorial Park is important for its spiritual values as the city’s civic cemetery. While this is Nelson’s third cemetery (earlier cemeteries were located near Falls and Baker Streets and at the present day Tourist Park), the longheld spiritual values of this place are intact.
The Park is valued for its 19th century picturesque, garden-like aesthetic with its burial plots separated by different associations, and for its importance as accessible open space for the citizens of Nelson.
Cultural value is found in the cemetery’s representation of different religious and ethnic associations including Anglican, Roman Catholic, Fraternal Order of the Eagles, Independent Order of Odd Fellows, Masons, Soldiers, Chinese, and the general citizenry, while the layout and design of markers reflect the varying customs and cultures of these diverse groups.
The cemetery is valuable historically for well-known Nelson citizens who are buried here, and through the military plot which consists of uniform gravestones that remember soldiers from the First and Second World Wars.
The cemetery is valuable for its use of granite and marble materials quarried locally, including from Three Mile Point Works east of Nelson, the Kootenay Lake Marble Quarry and Marblehead in Lardeau, while local stonecutters were responsible for carving epitaphs, erecting gravestones and placing the curbs.
From the City of Nelson Heritage Register, Page 80