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On a mound in the old Archer family burying ground, on the north side of the city along the St. Joseph River, stands the marked grave of John Chapman — Johnny Appleseed — who died in Fort Wayne in March 1845. The grave as a visited place has its own long, documented history. The McKay family, on whose land the Archer cemetery lay, gave the two-acre burying ground to Allen County in 1947. Johnny Appleseed Memorial Park and the Johnny Appleseed Memorial Bridge were dedicated on May 21, 1949. A bronze marker at the grave was placed on September 25, 1963. On January 17, 1973, the park and gravesite were listed on the National Register of Historic Places — the oldest National Register listing in Fort Wayne, a distinction the site still holds.
The place today is two adjoining parks: a 31-acre city park, Johnny Appleseed Park, and the county's Archer Park around the burying ground itself. Each September since the 1970s the grounds host the Johnny Appleseed Festival, one of the largest festivals in Indiana, built around the grave site — the festival's own record is in the Events chapter, and it held its 51st edition on September 19–20, 2026. Whether the marked grave is Chapman's actual resting place is a separate, genuinely contested question of evidence, and it belongs to the Folklore chapter, which treats the burial testimony in full. One rival tradition is itself a famous location: a second memorial stone, honoring the Roebuck farm tradition of the burial, stands by the ninth hole of the Canterbury Green golf course on the river's east bank. What is not contested is the fame of the marked site — it is the most visited grave in northeastern Indiana, and the reason the city's baseball club is called the TinCaps.
Sources: National Register of Historic Places, Johnny Appleseed Park and Gravesite listing, January 17, 1973; Fort Wayne Parks and Recreation park records; the Folklore chapter of this history for the burial evidence and the Canterbury Green stone.