Benton Avenue Cemetery

The cemetery's busy years were short. In 1883 Helena's first Memorial Day parade ended here with a ceremony among the graves, but within a decade the city's new Forestvale Cemetery had more than three hundred burials, and families moved many of their dead from Benton Avenue to the newer ground. The iron fence along the front, added in 1928, marks the end of the cemetery's active life. A reorganized cemetery association took it in hand in 1998, and the National Register listing of 2003 fulfilled a goal Lucy Baker had long pursued.

What the plaque says

Benton Avenue Cemetery Gold discoveries at Last Chance Gulch in 1864 brought a diverse population to the booming settlement of Helena. In 1870, Lewis and Clark County Commissioners established this ten-acre cemetery to serve the growing population. The first interments date to 1870. The historic road that borders the cemetery's east side, known as Benton Avenue, brought mourners and funeral processions from town. Benton Avenue became a convenient short- cut for lighter traffic off the main freighting routes and the Helena-Benton Road that entered town from North Main Street. Four simple quadrants divide the cemetery. Its central driveway is the original wagon road that led into the burial ground. Family plots dominate the southern half, outlined in stone curbing or wrought iron fencing. In 1872, the Masons purchased the northeast quadrant and most burials there have Masonic affiliations. The northwest quadrant includes many unmarked graves, some of them unidentified re- interments from the city's first cemetery, the site of present-day Central School. Lewis and Clark County operated the cemetery from 1870 to 1922 when the Benton Avenue Cemetery Association incorporated and acquired the deed from the county. Benton Avenue Cemetery achieved listing in the National Register of Historic Places in 2003.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Montana State Capitol — 1.7 mi
  A copper-domed capitol won in a copper kings' election, with a Russell painting that put the Salish at the center.
• Mann Gulch — 21 mi
  Thirteen markers on a grass slope above the Missouri, where a fire outran a crew of smokejumpers in 1949.

More markers nearby

• Unionville — 4.9 mi
• The Prickly Pear Diggings — 6.9 mi
• Over a Billion Years of Montana's Geologic History — 12 mi
• The Frenchwoman's Road — 13 mi