The cemetery is municipally owned and has achieved notoriety by being proclaimed as one of the largest cemeteries in the country.

Established in the mid 1800s as a privately owned cemetery, it was then sold to the City of Lynn in 1850. It boasts a variety of historically significant features and landmarks and it has been said that the burial ground, rich in history, is home to prominent artists, inventors, political leaders and even paupers.

The cemetery consists of approximately 250 developed acres which have been recorded in Ripley's Believe It or Not as the "second longest contiguous stone wall in the world", second only to the Great Wall of China. The wall is built of fieldstone and was built by the WPA in the 1930s. The cemetery houses between 88,000 and 90,000 interments.