Our cemetery was founded in 1850. Our arboretum was accredited in 2021. Our 189 acres encompass legacies and histories dating back to 500 BC-1100 AD. Explore and preserve them with us today. 

A visit to Forest Home Cemetery & Arboretum is a journey through history, nature, and culture. From ancient archaeology to our first American sweetgum sapling, there’s always something new to explore on our 189 acres.

New discoveries help us rewrite regional history. In 2024, an archaeologist and a Ho-Chunk Nation historian rediscovered two conical mounds at cemetery sections 15 and 19.

  • Constructed by members of the Indigenous Mound Builder civilization between 500-1100 AD, these earthen mounds were sacred burial sites and part of Wisconsin’s landscape for centuries.
  • Development destroyed most of these archaeological treasures during the 19th and 20th centuries.
  • Before the 2024 rediscoveries at Forest Home, experts believed Lake Park was home to Milwaukee’s last remaining burial mound. Now, Milwaukee is home to two more.

Our responsibility as a cemetery, under Wisconsin law Statutes s. 157.70, is to protect and preserve all burials.

  • View the mounds during a walk or drive through the grounds.
  • Treat them with the same respect and care we show all burial sites. Please walk carefully around the mounds, not across them.
  • Explore Native Milwaukee’s Mound Builder history as documented by historians.

The Forest Home Historic Preservation Association is grateful for the guidance and expertise of archeologists and historians who confirmed the mounds’ rediscovery.

What do we mean, ‘a rediscovery?’

Early European settlers called this area of Milwaukee “Indian Fields”—acknowledging its past as an agricultural and burial site for the Mound Builder and other Native civilizations.

Cemetery records and present-day conditions tell more of the story. Milwaukee surveyor and writer-geographer Increase Lapham may have designed the cemetery around the earthen mounds at Indian Fields.

  • Some of the first cemetery burials occurred in sections 15 and 19, and have co-existed with the mounds since our founding.
  • Lapham arranged Forest Home’s first burial sites in a circular manner, an unusual and inefficient design.
  • Being part of a cemetery protected and preserved them.