Oakland Cemetery

Stop 1 - Yellow Fever Victims

Between August and November 1873 Shreveport lost one-quarter of its population (or about 2,500 out of 10,000) to the third greatest epidemic of yellow fever to strike the United States. About half of these died and the other half fled, never to return. Almost all of the roughly 1,200 victims are buried at Oakland, 759 of them in a mass grave called the yellow fever mound, in the cemetery's southwestern quadrant. The number of victims in this mound may be lower than the true figure, since the number was calculated from newspaper accounts which were not completely accurate.

Yellow Fever Mound