Unearthing Atlanta’s long forgotten cemetery
Just inside Atlanta’s northern I-285 perimeter sits an untouched cemetery — larger than the city’s Oakland Cemetery, and home to thousands of graves lost to time.
The expansive 70-acre property is almost entirely invisible from outside the tree line of the forest that encompasses it. Its headstones and plaques are chipped away, buried in overgrowth and tangled in vines, making it nearly impossible to traverse and even harder to pinpoint the history that’s been abandoned there for decades.
Hollywood Cemetery was first established in the early 1890s where Proctor Creek intersects Hollywood Road on Atlanta’s west side. At the time, it was a solution to the city’s near-capacity burial grounds.
An Atlanta Constitution article from March 19, 1893, lauded the location as “a cemetery that is an honor to Atlanta” and the future resting place for generations to come.
“It is one of the most lovely landscapes in Georgia, with handsome drives, ornamental shrubbery, winding walks and all the elements to characterize it as an ideal and imposing City of the Dead,” the article said.
It was promised to be easily accessible through an electric train car line that carried coffins and passengers a little less than 5 miles from Luckie Street in downtown Atlanta to its grounds, according to the newspaper. And while burial lots within city limits at the time could cost anywhere from $200 to $500, Hollywood Cemetery lots could be purchased for $25 or less.
But at some point, in the late 1900s, burials in Hollywood Cemetery stopped. Funeral notices tapered off in local newspapers; families ceased visiting their loved ones laid to rest there and nature overtook the property.
Now, the couple who inherited the abandoned site in 2023 are working alongside environmental nonprofits to save both the cemetery’s history and its second-growth forest covered by invasive vines.
Tim Amoui and Shayda Frost became the sudden owners of the neglected cemetery two years ago, after the unexpected death of Frost’s father led them to take over the family business, Lincoln Memorial Group, one of the largest family-owned and operated cemetery companies in the Southeast.
Although Frost’s family has been in the industry since the 1960s, Amoui and Frost said neither was prepared for the massive undertaking. Amoui previously worked in financial public relations and Frost was a filmmaker.
Hollywood Cemetery sits directly behind Monte Vista Biblical Gardens on Gun Club Road — an active 10-acre cemetery also run by the couple. Just past the carefully groomed grass of Monte Vista, a vast tree canopy hides thousands more headstones.
“Hollywood is the 70 acres surrounding us in almost every direction,” Frost said. “It’s untouched in the middle of Atlanta — that’s the crazy part.”
Amoui stretched out a survey map from the year 2000 that labels the abandoned cemetery “no man’s land.” Neither of the owners know exactly how many graves or what else could be hidden under the cemetery tree cover — a majority of its grounds are too overgrown to explore.
The reasons behind Hollywood’s neglect are complex, they said. Plots in the cemetery were sold “fee simple” and owned directly by the families who purchased them and who were responsible for upkeep. And when white families fled Atlanta’s west side neighborhoods in the mid-1900s, connections to many people buried there were lost.
Unlike other cemeteries, Hollywood isn’t under perpetual care. That means a portion of every burial contract goes into a trust fund managed by the state and used to pay for maintenance, with the goal of keeping cemeteries from becoming dilapidated.
The Oakland Cemetery in Grant Park also is not under perpetual care, but the Historic Oakland Foundation and the City of Atlanta partner together to pay for its groundskeeping.
In 1910, the city considered buying Hollywood Cemetery to make it the city’s second municipal cemetery in Atlanta, but the idea was ultimately rejected.
“At the end of the day it could be like Oakland,” Amoui said. “That would be the greatest success of our lives.”
Amoui and Frost have big dreams of transforming the forgotten cemetery into a park and natural burial ground. Also known as green burials, the process involves biodegradable caskets that allow bodies to decompose.
“It’s a delicate balance of what can be done while you’re also protecting the ecosystem,” Frost said. “And how do you respect the area — because there are people here.”
But clearing 70 acres of untouched forest, cutting through vines and uncovering all the cemetery’s lost graves is a daunting and expensive task.
That’s where the nonprofit Devine GA is stepping in.
Devine’s Executive Director Wendy Hogg was already contemplating the challenge of restoring Hollywood Cemetery’s forest before she met Amoui and Frost.
After working in invasive vine removal for nearly two decades, the trees choked by kudzu, wisteria and ivy on the property caught her eye years before. Now, Hogg and her team are working to clear the vines by hand with only machetes to help them.
“Kudzu can grow a foot a day and it can take over,” she said while standing in an area cleared just that morning. “You can see from here how it’s just taken over these trees.”
But Hollywood’s neglect also means its unique plant life has gone undisturbed for decades. The variation of species and the cemetery’s proximity with Proctor Creek also piqued the interest of the Chattahoochee River Keepers, a well-known environmental nonprofit that’s helping clear the land.
“This is like a treasure,” Hogg said. “Because it’s a graveyard, it can’t be disturbed.”
Members of Devine are working tediously, one swing at a time, to remove the blanket of vines and give Hollywood’s trees a chance to recover without the potential damage of spraying chemicals.
Yusaf Shabazz — known by his Devine teammates as the “Kudzu King” — recently cleared the highest peak of Hollywood yet, exposing terraced plots built into the hillside with headstones dating back to the 1950s and a large, truncated pyramid monument.
It’s part of the 5 acres the nonprofit has been able to clear so far. Through incremental work and monthly cleanups, volunteers have picked up nearly 4 tons of trash, including over 100 tires.
“This is by far the biggest project that we’ve done,” said Shabazz, who has been working on the property for almost a year. “It’s been a learning process.”
The project is not only the biggest on the nonprofit’s list, but also by far the strangest as vines are cut back to unveil more grave markers with the names of Hollywood’s permanent residents.
“Whimsical” is the word Shabazz landed on to describe the endeavor.
“Especially when you see a grave with your name on it or your birthday,” he said.
About the Author
Riley Bunch is a reporter on the local government team at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution covering Atlanta City Hall. She covers the mayor and Atlanta City Council while also keeping an eye on the city’s diverse neighborhoods.
