[1] It is a municipal cemetery owned and operated by the Des Moines Parks and Recreation Department.

[5] The City Receiving Vault, which was used to store bodies when the ground was too frozen for graves to be dug, was built in the 1880s.

[5] In 1986, the city council of Des Moines designated the cemetery a local historic landmark.

[5] An effort to restore the mausoleum of Samuel Merrill, the seventh governor of Iowa was started.

[2] A project to add markers to hundreds of previously unmarked children's graves on "Baby Hill" from the earliest days of the cemetery concluded successfully in April 2017.