Double Butte Cemetery

Tempe buried its first generation here, on eighty acres of high ground chosen because the lower valley waterlogged too easily. Established before 1900 and named for the buttes behind it, Double Butte holds the town's best-known pioneer families alongside a rougher roll of the frontier dead: victims of hangings, shootings, and runaway horses. For decades a cemetery association tended it before the city took charge in the 1950s. It is the kind of ground that tells a town's real history plainly, the respectable and the violent laid in the same red earth.

What the plaque says

Tempe's first cemetery, named for the buttes in the background, was established before 1900 on 80 acres of high ground, since lower areas were waterlogged. Members of Tempe's best-known families lie here, along with victims of hangings, shootings, and runaway horses. The Tempe Cemetery Association managed it for many years until the mid-1950s, when the City of Tempe took charge and made many improvements.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Phoenix — 6.6 mi
  The fifth-largest US city, built on the canals of a thousand-year-old one
• Heard Museum — 7.4 mi
  The Native Southwest, told in the first person
• Taliesin West — 16 mi
  Frank Lloyd Wright's desert masterwork, grown from the ground it stands on

More markers nearby

• The Niels Petersen House — 1.0 mi
• Farmer-Goodwin Mansion — 2.0 mi
• Tempe Hardware Building — 2.3 mi
• The Old Church — 2.5 mi