Drive south on Dixie Highway past the Kroger and Expressway Plaza, and you'll pass a set of white cemetery gates most days without a second look. Behind them sits Highland Cemetery, 250 acres of graves, lakes, and rolling hillside that has been receiving Fort Mitchell's dead since 1869. What most residents don't clock on the drive to work is that 150 of those acres were never meant for burial plots at all. They were set aside decades ago as a Wildlife Enhancement Program, laced with trails that have names, a volunteer director, and a better claim to being the neighborhood's real outdoor amenity than the park most people default to.
That's the part worth sitting with. Fort Mitchell has a city park with pickleball courts and a playground. It also has, a few minutes away, a longer, wilder, and more varied trail network that isn't run by the parks department at all. Most people who've lived here for years have never walked it.
The Trails Have Names, Even If the Signs Don't Say So
Highland Cemetery's own site lists four miles of trail across that 150-acre undeveloped section, bordered by Highland Pike, the cities of Fort Wright and Fort Mitchell, and the developed cemetery grounds themselves. Local hikers who've logged time on every spur put the real total closer to six, once you count the smaller loops that branch off the main paths. Either number puts it well past a lap around a neighborhood block, and the terrain does more work than distance alone suggests: the trails climb and drop along a hillside, cross a running creek more than once, and pass a small waterfall along with the stone remains of a nineteenth-century springhouse.
The trails weren't an afterthought bolted onto a cemetery for optics. The Wildlife Enhancement Program behind them leaves dead trees standing on purpose, to give birds and other wildlife somewhere to nest and den, and at least one section has been rerouted specifically to avoid disturbing box turtles during hibernation. That's a level of habitat planning you don't usually find attached to a city recreation department, let alone a cemetery.
A Trail for What You Actually Came For
The network breaks into thirteen identified paths, most branching off a central spine called the Black Squirrel Trail, ranging from short connector spurs to loops just over a mile long. A few are worth knowing by name before you go.
| Trail | Character | Good for |
|---|---|---|
| Frog Loop | Paved, flat, runs through the historic grounds | Strollers, easy evening walks |
| Black Squirrel Trail | The main trunk route from the trailhead, crosses the creek | Anchoring a longer loop |
| Screech Owl Trail | Branches uphill off Black Squirrel through buckeye and linden woods | Spring wildflower walks |
| Fossil Trail | Creek-side, part of the property's fossil-bearing rock | Kids, curious walkers |
| Coyote Trail | Connects into the full loop, quieter than the paved sections | Longer hikes, fewer people |
String Black Squirrel, Screech Owl, Fossil, and Coyote together and you get what's mapped as the Highland Cemetery Loop, a 2.4-mile circuit with roughly 328 feet of elevation gain. That's a real workout by local standards, closer to a hillside hike than a park stroll, and it's the route regulars mean when they say they're "doing the whole loop."
The Calendar Nobody's Posting About
What separates this from a generic patch of woods is how much the property actually changes across the year, and how specifically that change has been documented by people who've walked it repeatedly.
Spring is the marquee season. Wildflowers peak around mid-April, and hikers who've tracked bloom after bloom have logged wild hyacinth spreading in patches along the hillside, woodland phlox thick enough to color the forest floor, and larkspur showing up in a purple deep enough to stop you mid-step. Early spring and summer double as prime birdwatching, with enough native and migratory species passing through that a bald eagle sighting made it into the local naturalist notes a few years back. By fall, the maples take over, with color peaking around mid-October. Winter thins the crowds but not the interest: the creek freezes into its own formations, and fresh snow turns the trails into a running log of whatever moved through overnight.
None of that shows up on a city events calendar. It shows up because people who've walked the same half-mile stretch for years noticed something new each season and wrote it down.
The Hikes Are Guided, and They Keep Coming Back
This isn't an abandoned easement that happens to be pretty. The City of Fort Mitchell and the cemetery run actual guided hikes on the property, led by Highland Cemetery's Nature Trail Director, Gayle Pille, alongside General Manager Bo Honebrink. The most recent one this year, held in March, was capped at the first 20 people who registered through the city's Programs and Communications Coordinator, Joe Christofield. At the time, the city said another hike was planned for summer and another for fall, meaning the program isn't a one-time favor to a reporter. It's a standing part of how the city treats this land, and with fall closing in, residents who missed the earlier dates likely have one more shot before the year's out.
When to Choose the Park Instead
None of this is an argument against General Ormsby Mitchell Park on Grandview Drive. If you want pickleball courts, a soccer field, sand volleyball, or a playground where the kids can burn off energy while you sit on a bench, that's exactly what it's built for, and it does that job well.
Highland Cemetery does something different. There's no basketball hoop, no vending machine, no scheduled rec league. What it offers instead is topography, wildlife, and enough acreage that you can walk twenty minutes without crossing your own path twice. One is a recreation facility. The other is closer to a nature preserve that happens to share its address with a cemetery, and knowing which one you actually want before you get in the car saves you a wasted trip.
Getting There
The entrance sits at 2167 Dixie Highway, off I-75 exit 188, directly across from the Kroger and Expressway Plaza Shopping Center. Once you're through the white gates, take every right-hand turn. You'll pass a lake on your right before reaching a small parking lot at the trailhead, marked by a Little Free Library box. According to the cemetery's own site, trails are open daily from 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Dogs are welcome on leash, but the rule is straightforward: keep them off the gravesites and clean up after them.
What This Says About the Neighborhood
The city has spent recent years leaning into the cemetery's Wildlife Enhancement Program as a neighborhood asset rather than ignoring it. That's a quieter kind of infrastructure than a new roundabout or a rezoned commercial strip, but it says something about how this particular neighborhood balances growth against the land it already has. The best amenity here isn't the one with a ribbon-cutting. It's the one behind a gate most people drive past every day without stopping to look.
If you're getting to know Fort Mitchell from the inside, whether you've lived here for years or you're still learning which streets connect to which, the Fort Mitchell neighborhood guide has more on what makes this stretch of Northern Kentucky work the way it does. And if a season of life change ever puts a move on your radar, in Fort Mitchell or anywhere else in Northern Kentucky, the Missy B Team is here to talk it through with you. Let's Connect.
