@celestialjenna's Review of Saint Roch Cemetery #1 - Campo Santo - New Orleans, Louisiana

This cemetery grew out of a yellow fever epidemic. End promise of gratitude. This is St. Rock Cemetery No. 1, established in 1874, for Fr. Peter Leonard Thevis' predominantly German Catholic congregation. even named it Campo Santo after the historic German cemetery beside St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. but the story begins in 1867. when yellow fever devastated New Orleans. Father Thevis believed that St. Rock had protected his parish during the outbreak. and that belief became part of the cemetery's identity. This cemetery and chapel complex is the only one in the United States dedicated to St. Rock. When it was new, many burials were simple in-ground graves marked by wooden crosses and other modest memorials. And more than 150 years later, St. Rock still feels like a place where the past is never very far away.