About Hope Cemetery
Hope Cemetery in Barre looks less like a uniform field of markers and more like an outdoor granite sculpture exhibition. The city became internationally known for its stone industry, and generations of highly skilled granite workers used the cemetery to create memorials that are far more personal than a conventional rectangular headstone.
Among the thousands of monuments are carvings shaped like a race car, an easy chair, a soccer ball, an airplane, and other objects connected to the people they commemorate. Some include unusually detailed portraits or scenes. Others demonstrate elaborate stoneworking techniques that transform blocks of local granite into forms that seem far too complicated for the material.
The cemetery was established in 1895 and covers roughly 65 acres. Vermont tourism materials describe about 10,000 monuments and markers on the grounds. Many were created by stonecutters who lived and worked in Barre, giving the site an unusually concentrated display of the craft that shaped the city.
The result is both solemn and visually strange. A visitor can walk from traditional monuments to a half-size granite race car or another intensely personal object within minutes. In a town built around stone, even the cemetery became a place for craftspeople to show exactly what granite could do.