The inspiration for Cypress Lawn started with a carriage ride. Our founder, Hamden Holmes Noble, was riding past San Francisco’s Laurel Hill Cemetery, which had transitioned from a source of pride to an eyesore within a matter of years. San Francisco’s land-hungry residents were turning against cemeteries, and it was during this carriage ride when Noble’s friend urged him to create a solution to the problem. In 1892, a group of civic-minded men led by Noble established Cypress Lawn a dozen miles south of San Francisco, a safe distance from the political reach of the city, which would later ban all burials, and then, in what was almost unthinkable, later passed a law “evicting” the dead from San Francisco. Because of this, over 35,000 people were later reinterred at Cypress Lawn. Read More: https://www.cypresslawn.com/about/who-we-are/our-history/