We paid a visit to the Lake View Cemetary in Cleveland in search of James Garfield's grave. After all, when you are in the neighborhood of a President's last resting place, you should stop and pay your respects.
The place isn't exactly in the best part of town - obviously things have changed in 100+ years - but we found it. Garfield has a nice enough spot, but the authorities lock it up a bit early so we didn't get to say hello. From there, we looked at the map of the place and noticed that John Rockefeller was buried there. One person asked, "Where would he be?" The response came back, "Let's look for the biggest monument with the best view."
A quick search turned it up. We felt pretty clever. And here it is. I believe there are a few other celebrities there, like Mark Hanna, the political kingmaker of his time.
Rockefeller is one of the richest Americans in history, at least relatively speaking. He had the good sense to create the Standard Oil Company in 1870, and ran it until 1897. Soon after he left, Standard Oil controlled about 90 percent of the nation's oil production. A monopoly eventually broke that company into pieces, but it was a heck of a run.
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