The Oak Hill Cemetery is located on its original forty rolling acres on the north side of the city of Lake Geneva and was established in 1880. Oak Hill Cemetery represents the Rural Cemetery Movement that became fashionable in the United States between the early 1830s and about 1900. In contrast to earlier urban churchyards, the so-called “rural” cemeteries constructed as part of this movement were characterized by locations distinctly outside of the cities they were meant to serve, as well as their naturalistic landscaping and secular orientation.

The property is characterized by its network of meandering drives and walkways, a perimeter of mature woodland with numerous trees and other plantings dotted throughout the landscape, and rolling topography that provides a scenic vista of Geneva Lake at its highest point. Spread throughout this picturesque setting is a wide variety of grave markers and monuments that range from modest stone slabs to grand obelisks and mausoleums. Oak Hill Cemetery is also notable as the burial place of many prominent Chicagoans who maintained vast summer estates in Lake Geneva during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As such, the cemetery is both a remarkable local example of the Rural Cemetery Movement as well as an important addition to the cultural heritage of the city of Lake Geneva.