The Mountain View Cemetery is a 226 acre rural cemetery in Oakland, California, United States. It was established in 1863 by a group of East Bay pioneers under the California Rural Cemetery Act of 1859. The association they formed still operates the cemetery today. Mountain View was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, the landscape architect who also designed New York City's Central Park and much of UC Berkeley and Stanford University. Many of California's important historical figures, drawn by Olmsted's reputation, are buried here. There are many grandiose crypts in tribute to the wealthy, especially along the ridge section with a view across the Bay to the San Francisco skyline, known as "Millionaires' Row". Because of this, and its beautiful setting, the cemetery is a tourist draw. Tours led by docents began in 1970.

Design

Olmsted's intent was to create a space that would express a harmony between humankind and the natural setting. In the view of 19th century English and American romantics, park-like cemeteries, such as Mountain View, represented the peace of nature, to which humanity's soul returns. Olmsted, drawing upon the concepts of American Transcendentalism, integrated Parisian grand monuments and broad avenues. Adjoining Mountain View Cemetery is Saint Mary Cemetery and the Chapel of the Chimes mausoleum and columbarium.

Notable burials

There are many notable people interred in Mountain View; many are local figures in California history, but others have achieved wider fame.

Politicians and government officials

Industrialists and business people

Military

Arts and culture

Local history

Other

In popular culture

Mountain View Cemetery is featured prominently in the 2018 film Blindspotting. Daveed Diggs's character is shown going there for morning runs, and an important scene happens in the cemetery where the character imagines Black victims of police brutality standing over the graves. In The Big Wake-Up, a 2009 crime novel by Mark Coggins, the main character in the book, a detective named August Riordan, discovers that Argentine first lady Eva Perón is not at rest in the Duarte family tomb in La Recoleta Cemetery, Buenos Aires, but is actually buried in Mountain View Cemetery.