After Ferdinand Haase sold some of his land to the founders of Concordia Cemetery in the 1870s, the cemetery business seemed more profitable than a picnic grove for the land now known as Forest Home Cemetery.
The land, along the Des Plaines River, had burial mounds from the mound-building cultures of the people who lived here before European settlement. Archeologist Charles Kenicott of River Forest recorded many of the local area’s mounds and trails, and excavated the artifacts, silver, tools, jewelry and pottery. Those items were displayed in the cemetery office and later given to the Forest Park Public Library to be repatriated in 2019.
In 1941, the Haase family erected a statue on Indian Hill, a gathering place for the Potawatomi people. A year later, the family placed a large boulder with a carved face of a Potawatomi man at the trailhead found in section 27 of Forest Home Cemetery.
