It was maintained by the local chapter of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows and a part-time city employee.

The following year Ray Wyrick, a Des Moines landscape engineer, presented a plan to redevelop the cemetery.

In addition to design work and plantings, the plan included updating the cemetery's rules and regulations to make it self-supporting.

The City Cemetery features a stone wall capped with an wrought iron fence that was built by the WPA in 1936.

The original group of statues of the Virgin Mary, John the Apostle, and the crucified Christ was erected in the early 1900s.

Large die, base, and cap granite and marble markers are found in the older sections of the cemetery.

Other markers include "chest tombs, cruciforms, round columns or pillars, bolsters (stone cylinders) on footings; four polished granite ledger slabs, and one ledger slab covered with tiles.