Mount Moriah Cemetery

The largest cemetery in Pennsylvania closed its gates because everybody who owned it had died.

Mount Moriah spans the border between Southwest Philadelphia and Yeadon. It was established in 1855, covers 200 acres and holds 150,000 burials, and it was built on a different premise from Philadelphia's other rural cemeteries. Where Laurel Hill and the Woodlands sat apart from the city, Mount Moriah was easily reached by streetcar, catered to a more middle-class clientele, and allowed the burial of African-Americans, Jews and Muslims.

It is also part of the United States National Cemetery System, dating back to the Civil War, and contains two military burial plots maintained by the Department of Veterans Affairs: the Soldiers' Lot on the Philadelphia side, with 406 burials, and the Naval Plot on the Yeadon side, with 2,400.

Then the organisation running it ran out of people. The last member of the board of directors died and the cemetery was left with no owner at all. It closed its gates in April 2011, grew wildly overgrown, became a site for illegal dumping, and its buildings, graves and monuments fell into disrepair.

What happened next is the part worth knowing. A non-profit called the Friends of Mount Moriah Cemetery formed to clear the brush, maintain graves, stabilise the crumbling gatehouse and raise money for a petition to place the cemetery on the National Register of Historic Places. The Orphans Court of Philadelphia granted a second organisation, the Mount Moriah Cemetery Preservation Corporation, a role in the ground as well.

The Veterans Affairs page for the Naval Plot fills in the history and one striking detail: for a time Mount Moriah held the remains of Betsy Ross, reputed maker of the American flag. The rules it posts are worth reading before you visit, since this is an active national cemetery lot inside a cemetery that lost its keeper.