Prairie Home Cemetery's Tombstone Trot Draws Runners Through 177-Year-Old Grounds; Fall Colors Peak For 5K Course

WAUKESHA — Prairie Home Cemetery will mark its 177th year of continuous operation on Sunday the way it has for several Octobers running: by letting between 140 and 180 people run through it on purpose.

The annual Tombstone Trot begins at 9 a.m. at the cemetery's main gate, 605 S. Prairie Ave., with a 5K run, a 2-mile walk, and a kids' 1K dash, all routed along the grounds' tree-lined interior paths. Registration for the 5K is $32.50. A portion of proceeds benefits Friends of Prairie Home Cemetery, the nonprofit that maintains the grounds, and organizers say this year's field is tracking toward the upper end of the usual range.

"We don't get a lot of complaints about the scenery," said Carol Stepp, 54, president of the Friends of Prairie Home Cemetery board, who has coordinated the event's course marshals for six years. "People finish the 5K and the first thing they say is not about their time. It's about a specific tree."

A Course With Opinions

The 5K loop winds past sections of the cemetery dating to its 1849 founding, including a stand of maples near the northeast fence line that Stepp said has, in recent years, developed something of a reputation among returning racers. Several past participants have told organizers, unprompted, that they pace themselves off that stand, slowing to look up at it on the way out and using the same stretch to judge their position on the way back.

Russ Okonek, 61, an assistant race director who has worked the course table at the Trot since 2019, said the cooler October temperatures are part of the draw for a field that otherwise skews toward the same summer 5K circuit. "You run this in July, nobody's looking at the maples," Okonek said. "You run it in October, everybody's looking at the maples. Changes the whole mood of the thing."

"People finish the 5K and the first thing they say is not about their time. It's about a specific tree."

— Carol Stepp, Friends of Prairie Home Cemetery board president

Okonek said several regulars now track their mile splits against landmarks rather than their own watches, a habit he attributed partly to the grounds and partly to the same GPS running watch (paid link) that he said at least three other racers wear, which he described as "accurate enough, until you're next to a 177-year-old obelisk and you start doubting it instead."

The Walk Draws Its Own Crowd

The 2-mile walk, which shares the first half mile of the 5K route before splitting off, has become its own fixture among an older set of participants who return less for the pace than for the setting. Pat Delvecchio, 67, who has walked the route every year since 2014, said she times her pace to finish near the back of the field on purpose.

"The runners go through it. I'd rather go through it slower," Delvecchio said. She said she brings the same thermos of coffee to the starting line each year and has never once used it, preferring to carry it the full two miles and drink it afterward in the parking lot. Asked why, she said only that it "feels correct."

Sunday's Plan

Gates open at 8 a.m. for packet pickup, with the kids' 1K dash set to start shortly after the 5K and 2-mile fields clear the first turn. Organizers said parking will be available along Prairie Avenue and in the cemetery's own lot, and asked that spectators keep to the paved paths rather than the grass between rows.

Councilman Gary Puchalski is expected to read a proclamation marking the cemetery's 177th anniversary before the starting gun, a tradition Stepp said the board appreciates "as long as it's brief," noting that last year's reading ran four minutes longer than the 1K dash it preceded. Puchalski, reached Tuesday, said he intended to "respect the room" this time.

Race-day registration will be available for the 2-mile walk and kids' dash. The 5K field closes to new entrants Saturday at 5 p.m.