"And soft upon the quiet midnight, after the song was done, the bell tolled on a weird accompaniment to the tramp of the students, its tones gradually mellowing in the distance until they fell like whispers out of the sky. They ceased, the long line halted, and then parting from it, the little cortage took it's silent way down over the low-lying land which stretches toward Durham - 'going down the valley' - under the trees and the stars and the milk-white mists which hang between, and widening the rift, which is ever widening still, between the living and the dead."
    - Description of a the funeral of a 'wine-sotted sophomore' in Old Chapel Hill Cemetery    c. 1880 by W.J. Peele

We think of cemeteries as places of death, as tangible representations of the rift between the living and the dead. But they are far more than a resting place for the dead. Cemeteries are not merely the resting place of old bones and marble markers. They are a link to our past, a memorial to those who have gone before, to those who shaped towns, cities, and states and made them into the places which we love.

Walk through the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery and you walk through time itself. Buried here is the triumph of conquering the American wilderness, the bitter legacy of slavery, the tragedy of the Civil War, the confusion of Reconstruction and the achievements of North Carolina's most accomplished sons and daughters. Bridge the rift between the living and the dead and take a tour through Chapel Hill's history.