Woodlawn Cemetery tours spotlight West Palm Beach history and volunteer stewardship

Ginger Peterson, a West Palm Beach writer, historian and volunteer, said the city’s Woodlawn Cemetery “serves as a link to West Palm Beach’s rich history” and that organized tours run during the cooler months to highlight the stories of people buried there.

Peterson, speaking on the City Center podcast produced by the City of West Palm Beach Department of Communications, said the cemetery — which she described as the city’s only public cemetery managed by the parks department — contains graves that connect residents to the city’s founding era and later events. “We do the tours from, we do them October and November, and then we do January, February, March, and April,” Peterson said, adding that reservations are handled through Eventbrite.

The tours aim to put faces and stories to names on headstones and to preserve local memory as the city changes. “There’s very dark stories and there’s very wonderful stories in Woodlawn,” Peterson said, noting the cemetery includes burials of people who lived through early storms and epidemics and examples of early civic leaders and other notable residents.

Peterson described several historical details discussed on tours: the cemetery’s layout was paid for by Henry Flagler in the late 1800s; some remains were moved to Woodlawn from earlier private cemeteries such as Lakeside when property owners could no longer maintain them; and a number of people who died in the 1928 hurricane were buried in a mass grave. She also noted there are “a few tombstones under in a crawl space under the Norton,” referring to the site now occupied by the Norton Museum, where earlier burials were relocated.

The program is run in cooperation with the West Palm Beach Parks Department and uses a reservation system to limit group size. Peterson said organizers usually limit tours to between about 40 and 60 attendees and that Eventbrite sign-ups are free and do not require payment information, which she described as a crowd-control measure. The podcast host, Jerry Marcello, directed listeners to the city website for scheduling details.

Volunteers and community groups support cemetery care and the tours. Peterson said volunteers have taken part in headstone cleanings, sometimes with help from Palm Beach Atlantic University and employees of Florida Power & Light. She encouraged residents to donate photographs or documents of local significance to the Historical Society of Palm Beach County’s archives and described the society’s archive in the 1916 courthouse as the place that preserves such materials.

Peterson also mentioned related local research and publications: she co-wrote Legendary Locals of West Palm Beach and is working on a forthcoming book about Dr. Mabel Elliott, a physician with ties to the city. She said the books and the tours are ways to preserve and share the city’s layered history as neighborhoods and buildings change.

Peterson and Marcello emphasized that the tours are not intended as ghost tours. “We’re not doing a ghost tour. No,” Peterson said, stressing the tours’ focus on respectful storytelling and historical context.

For people interested in attending, Peterson said reservations open about a month at a time; as of the podcast’s recording the March reservations were available. The city’s website (wpb.org) and the West Palm Beach Parks Department Facebook page list sign-up links; the City Center podcast also listed the city’s phone number, (561) 804-4906, for general information.

Why it matters: Peterson and the Historical Society framed the Woodlawn Cemetery tours as an active way to preserve West Palm Beach’s history for residents amid rapid development and changing landscapes. The tours, free but capacity-limited, combine volunteer labor with city-run scheduling to keep records, artifacts and local narratives accessible to the public.

Ending note: Peterson invited residents to volunteer for cemetery cleanings and archiving efforts and said donated photos and documents often solve local historical mysteries. The City Center podcast credited the West Palm Beach Department of Communications as the program producer.