BY CRAIG COLEY • PHOTOGRAPHY BY RODNEY MARGISON

Like many memorial parks built in the 1800s, Bloomington’s Rose Hill Cemetery is a meditative space with meandering paths and open vistas. This year marks the park’s bicentennial, and Cory Hawkins, natural resource education specialist with the Bloomington Parks and Recreation Department, hopes more residents make a visit to Rose Hill.

“This is an underutilized park,” Hawkins says. “It’s big, it’s beautiful, it’s wide open, and it should be used by Bloomingtonians as much as possible. Cemeteries were the original parks. They were the original open space where people would hang out and see friends and neighbors, eat food, and listen to music.”