Cincinnati's Potter's Field is Officially on the National Register of Historic Places. Now What?

Cincinnati’s Potter’s Field was officially added to the National Register of Historic Places last week, but city leaders aren’t talking about next steps for the site.
Potter's Field, located in West Price Hill, is a long-neglected historical burial ground where people (often poor or unidentified) were buried from the mid-1800s to 1981. The graves, most of which are unmarked, stretch across roughly 26 acres at the northwest side of Guerley Road into Rapid Run Park. In an October cover feature , CityBeat detailed the extensive efforts of local historians who are identifying the backstories of those who ended up in Potter’s Field, including cholera patients, Civil War soldiers, bodies used for medical science, people who were involuntarily committed to institutions and individuals whose families were unaware of their burial location. Once the city stopped burying people in Potter’s, the site was all but abandoned. Invasive overgrowth, trash and time have buried the once-visible grave markers, swallowing the evidence of thousands of lost lives.

After a community push to investigate just how far into Rapid Run park the unmarked burials stretched, the site was recommended to join the register in December during an Ohio Historic Site Preservation Advisory Board meeting. The application for the honor was submitted by Mike Morgan, an attorney and adjunct horticulture instructor at the University of Cincinnati. He told CityBeat the state’s recommendation for the site to join the list was the biggest hurdle for the site, but he’s glad the National Parks Service (NPS) approved Potter’s across the finish line.
“There's always some possibility that there's an objection there, but we got through it,” he said. “It was mostly a matter of waiting. But nevertheless, it wasn't official until it's official. And now it is.”
Potter's Field advocates, including family members of those interred at the site, have pushed for years to see the cemetery cleaned up and properly maintained. Sandy Rice, an amateur genealogical researcher and historian, has been researching the mass gave site for more than 10 years . Her efforts are outlined in CityBeat 's October cover, including her passion for restoring dignity to the ground that houses her own great-grandfather.

“All of us want the same thing,” Rice told CityBeat in October. “We’d like to see the cemetery put back into a state of respect.” [content-1]
Now that Potter’s has joined the National Register of Historic Places, Morgan said there’s a chance the site could see improvements, but it’s not a guarantee.
“The National Register doesn't force any particular behavior,” he said. “It's really kind of voluntarily compliant. But what it does is it makes it clear to the city that there is significance to this site. But the most important aspect is that, aside from bringing attention to it, and bringing some respect to it, just in that way, it opens up additional grant funding.”

CityBeat reached out to Cincinnati Parks, the department that oversees Potter’s Field, to ask if there’s a plan for the city to apply for these grants. Cincinnati Parks spokesperson Rocky Merz told CityBeat that Cincinnati Parks director Jason Barron was unavailable for an interview, but provided a statement on the historical status recognition for Potter's.
"We are grateful that Potter's Field has been added to the National Register of Historic Places. This designation will help us continue our commitment to protecting and preserving this area to honor the memory of all those buried in there,” reads a statement from Barron.
CityBeat has requested interviews with Barron to discuss Potter’s Field repeatedly since October; requests which have been met with silence or canned statements.
In CityBeat ’s previous reporting on Potter’s, City Manager Sheryl Long told CityBeat that there are “no plans to develop or change Potter’s Field.”
Cincinnati’s Potter’s Field is only the second cemetery that was reserved only for the unidentified and poor to make the National Register of Historic Places. The first was City Cemetery in Hot Springs, Arkansas, according to the Department of Interior’s online catalog of historic places.
According to the City of Hot Springs website, City Cemetery was added to the register in 2021, but cleanup efforts to improve landscaping around the graves started years earlier.
“Through a citizens' driven initiative to uncover the history of the cemetery, the city began the monumental task of restoring the property,” the site reads .
According to a report from KARK , an NBC affiliate out of Little Rock, that monumental effort was spearheaded by Hot Springs locals Karen White and her husband, Brian White.
"Actually, we brought in a herd of goats,” Hot Springs City Manager Bill Burrough told KARK. “It’s hallowed ground.”

CityBeat reached out to Hot Springs officials to inquire about the cost of maintaining City Cemetery, but officials did not respond by press time.
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