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In Atlanta, they just throw the bodies in the woods and tell you they cremate them.
Saves you both the hassle of a gas bill, AND lets you sell urns.
In this case, the orientation of the body is more important. And that would be HORIZONTAL
so that you don't SEE them when you walk through the woods.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tri-State_Crematory
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Ah ..
so that's what "everyone's trippin' " in Atlanta means.
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Having just thought about this very topic two days ago while at a very beautiful Boston cemetery, I can say that it depends very much on the landscape and the surroundings. In this cemetery, it was oriented toward topography (ponds, old trees, hills, vistas). The "newer sections" (as in, late 19th century) were set, it appears, by the enormous monoliths erected by those trying to inch their way up to heaven with 10' or higher obelisks. So, if you were in a section that was "plain" you would have been guided to place your headstone in such a way that was oriented in favor of the already dead wealthy patrons of this establishment.
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I guess I should have put the entire question in the subject line-- I was referring specifically to vertical orientation, i.e. level vs. tilted.
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Some cemeteries are municipally owned, often 'run' by the parks department.
After one or two generations, plots don't get too many visitors.
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Depends on the cemetery, some are "private" in ownership belonging to a cemetery association or church, and others belong to the community they are in. Many in the second group got that way when the private ownership failed due to financial problems of one sort or another, and the property defaulted to the town for unpaid taxes. How much money is available for upkeep will depend on the how much was charged for a plot in the first place, how well the portion that is invested for future upkeep was managed, or how much is budgeted by the town. And there might not be family around "to raise heck" about maintenance of stones, etc.
Another source of formerly private cemeteries are family burial lots that have been abandoned over the years when the remaining family moved away from the area or died out. They can be found in places all over New England for example. Some will get dug up and moved to another cemetery to make way for building, but in many cases they have remained and the local town or county will do what they can afford on upkeep.
An example would be one my son catalogued as his Eagle Scout project. He created a database and list of the names, inscriptions and photos of headstones to be used by an organization which is trying to track down these cemeteries for genealogical and related research. The cemetery had been used by several generations of families related by marriage from the late 1700's to early in the 1900's. At some point, no members were left in the area, and it was eventually abandoned. The current owner of the adjacent property does keep the access road cleared. The town will mow it every so often, and did send out a crew to remove a 3' diameter white pine that fell in a storm and crushed a number of markers. The broken headstones and some footstones were patched together by a volunteer group.
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Unfortunately, I have plenty of experience with area cemeteries. Even if you pay the perpetual care fees, they will never assure the stones are level. It is nearly impossible given the severe weather we have here.
I did raise a fuss once when the stone looked really bad (the entire left side of the base had sunken into the ground), but it took a bit of "convincing."
Even worse, many cemeteries won't even upright a toppled stone unless they can make sure someone is available to pay for it. I recently paid $40 for someone to reset a toppled stone at Jewish Waldheim. The family member is one who passed away in the 30's, WAAAAYYY before my time, but I thought it was the right thing to do.
DM
