Bonaventure Cemetery

John Muir slept on the graves here for six nights, and thought it was the most beautiful place he had seen.

In 1867 Muir set out on his Thousand-Mile Walk to Florida and the Gulf. That October he stopped in Bonaventure, outside Savannah, and stayed six days and nights, sleeping on the graves overnight because it was the safest and cheapest accommodation he could find while he waited for money to be sent from home. He found it breathtakingly beautiful.

The cemetery sits on a bluff above the Wilmington River southeast of downtown Savannah, on the former site of Bonaventure Plantation, originally owned by Colonel John Mullryne. On 10 March 1846 Commodore Josiah Tattnall III sold the 600-acre plantation and its private cemetery to Peter Wiltberger. The first burials were in 1850, and three years after that Wiltberger himself was entombed in a family vault. His son, Major William H. Wiltberger, formed the Evergreen Cemetery Company on 12 June 1868.

So for its first sixty years this was a private commercial enterprise called Evergreen, laid out across 70 acres of the old plantation because it had become obvious the city needed the space. On 7 July 1907 the City of Savannah bought the company, made the cemetery public, and changed the name to Bonaventure. It is now the largest of Savannah's municipal cemeteries at nearly 160 acres.

The entrance is at 330 Bonaventure Road, and immediately inside the gates stands the large and ornate Gaston Tomb, built in memory of the merchant William Gaston.

Most people arrive because of a book. Bonaventure's fame grew after John Berendt's 1994 novel Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and the Clint Eastwood film that followed. The Bonaventure Historical Society now runs tours, keeps plot records and maps, and publishes a mobile tour app, so you can find a specific grave rather than wander hoping.