Tour of Wyuka

It was a beautiful day for the 140-year anniversary of Wyuka Cemetery in Lincoln, Nebraska today. I went with five friends for the celebration. Several hundred people showed up. The highlight for me was a fine hour and a half tour of the cemetery by Lincoln historian Ed Zimmer. About 200 people followed Ed through the cemetery. He highlighted several beautiful monuments, those of famous people, and early burials. The attached photo is of the group hearing about the GAR section. There are over 1,000 Civil War soldiers buried at Wyuka. The tour ended with the presentation of the new beautiful 110-page four-color book, Wyuka Cemetery: A Driving & Walking Tour, by Ed Zimmer. The books were presented free to all of the tour participants through a grant of the Nebraska Humanities Council. One of the founding goals was to have a cemetery where people could picnic and walk through treed gardens and to remember and learn of the areas past. That is what we did today, 140 years later.

Wyuka Anniversary

Tomorrow a few friends and I plan to attend the 140-year anniversary of our local Wyuka Cemetery here in Lincoln, Nebraska. Wyuka means place of rest. It was funded by the Nebraska legislature in 1869 as a rural scenic cemetery. It has winding roads and many very nice monuments. Is is now on the National Register of Historic Places. They will be giving their new tour and have other events to encourage people to visit for the anniversary. We plan to do the walking tour, or do our own, followed by a box lunch picnic. I try to do the Find A Grave requests for Wyuka and have one to do for tomorrow. Wyuka is well organized for genealogists. They have plat maps online as well as a database of burials. http://www.wyuka.com/LocationSearch/Index.asp