Clinton Grove Cemetery

The Clinton Grove Cemetery is a notable example of a Victorian-era cemetery, reflecting a system of planned roads and plots which demonstrate nineteenth- and early twentieth-century design principles. It clearly depicts its origins in the 'rural' cemetery movement and its transformation to a perpetual care memorial park. The exquisite artistic quality of the funerary art, found in the vast quantity of family mausolea, handsome monuments and grave markers, all contribute to the sense of serene beauty in this place. The trees, bushes, shrubs and flowers marking many graves create a landscape design which adds to the beauty, peace and serenity of the park.

The Clinton Grove Cemetery is located west of Mt. Clemens in Clinton Township on Cass Avenue between Groesbeck Highway and Little Road near the North Branch of the Clinton River. The cemetery sits on a very slight elevation at about six hundred feet above sea level. It is a forty-eight acre burial ground owned and operated by the Clinton Grove Cemetery Association. The property includes an office and chapel, public mausoleum, caretaker's house and over nineteen thousand graves. There are three family mausolea and one above-ground contemporary crypt among the in-ground burials. Clinton Grove had its beginnings in the nineteenth-century 'rural' cemetery movement and made the transformation to a twentieth-century perpetual care memorial park; hence there are a wide variety of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century monuments, many of them notable examples of funerary art. Clinton Grove's grounds are beautifully landscaped with over 570 trees, many of them well over one hundred years old. In addition, there are memorial trees on individual plots.