What better way to celebrate the unseasonably warm weather the day after Christmas than to head to Bellefontaine Cemetery?

So today and the three following days, we’ll look at four different themes of various sights we saw as we walked the grounds away from the roads.

We saw old favorites and many new ones. Take the January monument above; there was a limestone marker nearby that seems to have been replaced by the new granite one.

Acid rain, with its high sulfur content, does heavy damage to limestone. That is why only granite is allowed in the cemetery today.

There are several chemical equations for acid rain, but here is how it happens:

SO2 (g) + O2 (g) → SO3

SO3 (g) + H2O (l) → H2SO4

Sulfur got into the air by burning crappy dirty St. Louis (mined out in Tower Grove South) and Southern Illinois coal. Before you know it, you have sulfuric acid raining down the cemetery!

CaCO3 + H2SO4 → CaSO4 + CO2 + H2O

The sulfuric acid reacts with the limestone’s calcium carbonate, ruining the sculpture, which we see today so heavily deteriorated.

Granite certainly can be eroded by water over centuries, but it does not react with sulfuric acid in the same disastrous way as limestone.

Sculpting in granite is not much fun–just ask the Egyptians–but it lasts so much longer.

Columns such as these have precedent going back to the Roman Forum.