GETTING CREATIVE

Associated Press

CORTLAND, N.Y.

Forget the old joke about people dying to get in. Cemeteries are getting more interested in attracting the living.

With cremations expected to outpace burials in the U.S. for the first time this year, it’s a way for cemeteries that rely on the sale of gravesites and services to make up for lost revenue.

“We have to get creative,” said Steven Lillie, president of the rural Black River Cemetery Association. “A lot of people are getting cremated and sitting on someone’s mantel forever, or getting scattered.”

The Cortland Rural Cemetery this spring cut the ribbon on a new “cemetrail” and arboretum, which encourage visitors to wander the 44-acre site and linger at new signposts to read about the people buried there, the geology of the rock used for markers, the artistic style of the monuments and the trees that shade them. The 20 stations, created in collaboration with the State University of New York at Cortland, include QR codes for smartphone scanning.

“We decided to try to reposition the cemetery as a cultural and historical and natural place, as opposed to just a place to memorialize people,” said John Hoeschele, president of the Cortland site’s board of directors. He coined the term “cemetrail,” which is funded by a $30,000 “Operation Greenspace” grant from the J.M. McDonald Foundation.

A July report by the National Funeral Directors Association said that by the end of 2015, the cremation rate will have increased by more than 50 percent over the past 10 years. Cremations are projected to account for 48.5 percent of services this year, surpassing for the first time the burial rate, which is expected to be 45.6 percent, the report said.

Even people who are both cremated and buried deliver less revenue because multiple sets of cremated remains are often put in a single plot, or if interred alone, in a smaller space.

Larger cemeteries with famous or historic figures have embraced cemetery tourism, charging admission for guided excursions.

But independent rural cemeteries without such obvious draws have been finding ways to take advantage of other assets. Marion Cemetery in Ohio offers a buy-one, get-one plot sale around Memorial Day and recently sent out its first fundraising mailing, superintendent Jim Riedl said. The cemetery is considering a car show to bring people in, he said, citing other cemeteries that have staged egg hunts and yoga classes and named streets within the grounds after donors to balance the books.