Colonel Sanders Grave

Harland Sanders led a long and restless life before he found fame. Born in Indiana in 1890, he worked a string of jobs, from farmhand to steamboat pilot to insurance salesman, before running a service station and restaurant in Corbin, in southeastern Kentucky, where he perfected his fried chicken and its secret blend of seasonings. The state made him an honorary Kentucky Colonel, the title he wore for the rest of his life.

It was only in his sixties that Sanders began franchising his recipe, driving from restaurant to restaurant to sell the idea of Kentucky Fried Chicken. The concept caught fire, and the business grew into an international giant. He sold the company but stayed on as its goateed, white-suited spokesman and its living symbol, one of the most famous brand faces on earth, until his death in 1980.

Sanders is buried at Cave Hill, his grave marked by a bronze bust that shows him in the trademark suit and string tie, so there is no mistaking whose resting place it is. Fans leave tokens and pause to remember the man whose face they know from signs and buckets around the world, a genuinely global figure at rest in his adopted home state.

The bust and grave sit within the larger cemetery, which welcomes respectful visitors to find them among the grounds. It is a strangely moving thing to stand at the quiet grave of a face so ubiquitous, in a peaceful garden a world away from the roadside restaurants where his story began.

Cave Hill was established in the 1840s as a garden cemetery, part of a movement that made burial grounds into beautiful, park-like landscapes for the living to stroll as well as places to bury the dead. Its rolling grounds hold ponds, fountains, towering old trees, and a wealth of Victorian statuary and monuments, and it is recognized as a certified arboretum for its remarkable collection of trees.

Many notable Louisvillians rest here, and among them is another global icon: the boxer and humanitarian Muhammad Ali, whose grave draws its own steady stream of visitors a short distance from the Colonel's. Between the two, and the beauty of the grounds themselves, Cave Hill is one of the most rewarding quiet stops in the city. The land was long part of the ancestral country of the Shawnee and other nations whose descendants continue today.

Spring is glorious at Cave Hill, when the arboretum's flowering trees bloom across the grounds.

Summer is green and full, the ponds and shade making for a cool, peaceful walk on warm days.

Fall turns the cemetery's great trees to gold and crimson, one of the loveliest times to wander the grounds.

Winter strips the trees and quiets the landscape, revealing the monuments and the shape of the grounds under bare branches.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.