Hillside Cemetery in the North Cedar area of Cedar Falls located North of East Lone Tree Road is significant for historical and literary reasons. It was originally the family plot of Solomon and Martha Knapp, who buried 24-year old Oscar Knapp here in 1855. The following year, the Knapps deeded a three-quarter acre area on the sloping hillside to Washington Township trustees for use as a public cemetery.
A number of early Cedar Falls pioneers are buried in Hillside Cemetery, which is now maintained by the city with the assistance of the Hillside Cemetery Association. Perhaps the best known are Zimri and Lucinda Streeter, grandparents of Cedar Falls novelist Bess Streeter Aldrich.
Near the Streeter graves are those of the Leepers, three of whose children died on the same day in 1880 during a diphtheria epidemic. Several veterans of the Civil War are also buried here.