Actress Edith Gaertner was the granddaughter of the city’s founder, Hermann Blumenau. After a career of acting in Germany, in 1924 she received bad news regarding her family, so she returned home to live out the rest of her days. During her time there, she built a botanical garden that hosts a variety of native trees, a mini zoo, and a cemetery for the 50 cats she raised there. You can find nine tombstones and various cat statues of her beloved cats.
Gaertner donated the land to the city before she died in 1967. They kept the cemetery in her memory.
