Cremation in America: A History and the Rates by Decade

Updated September 5, 2026 · Written by Jordan Colton, founder of Cherished Emblems · Rates updated each year when the Cremation Association of North America publishes

How did cremation become the most common choice in America?

Cremation went from a curiosity to the American norm in about fifty years. Fewer than 5 percent of Americans who died in the 1960s were cremated; the rate passed burial in the middle of the 2010s and reached 62.8 percent in 2025, according to the Cremation Association of North America. The change came from three directions at once: cost, a population that stopped living near the family plot, and a loosening of religious objections, led by the Catholic Church's 1963 decision to permit it.

This page tells that story in order, from the first American crematory in a Pennsylvania town in 1876 to the water cremation and composting laws of the 2020s, with a rate chart and a year by year table you can check against the sources. It is written for families who want to understand how the choice they are making came to be ordinary, and for anyone who simply likes a good history. Nothing here is meant to tell you what to choose.

Key facts at a glance

• 1876: Dr. Francis Julius LeMoyne built the first crematory in the United States on his own land in Washington, Pennsylvania; the first cremation there, of Baron Joseph Henry Louis Charles De Palm, took place on December 6, 1876 (Washington County Historical Society; CANA).
• 1884: Fresh Pond Crematory opened in Queens as the first crematory in New York; by 1900 the country had about 20 crematories (Untapped New York; CANA).
• 1913: Dr. Hugo Erichsen called the meeting that founded the Cremation Association of America, renamed the Cremation Association of North America in 1975 (CANA).
• 1917 to 1963: Canon 1203 of the 1917 Code of Canon Law forbade cremation for Catholics; the Holy Office instruction Piam et Constantem lifted the ban in 1963 (Piam et Constantem).
• 1963: Jessica Mitford's The American Way of Death sold out its first printing on release day and led to congressional hearings on funeral costs (Lapham's Quarterly).
• 1973: The national cremation rate reached 5 percent, nearly a century after LeMoyne (CANA).
• April 30, 1984: The Federal Trade Commission's Funeral Rule took effect, requiring itemized price lists and barring funeral homes from claiming a casket is required for direct cremation (FTC).
• 2015 to 2016: NFDA reported cremation passing burial in 2015 (48.5 percent to 45.4 percent); CANA's count crossed 50 percent in 2016 at 50.4 percent (NFDA 2016 report; CANA).
• May 21, 2019: Washington became the first state to legalize natural organic reduction, or human composting, effective May 1, 2020 (MRSC).
• 2025: 62.8 percent of US deaths ended in cremation, with 69.1 percent projected for 2030 by CANA and 82.3 percent for 2045 by NFDA (CANA; NFDA).

On this page

• The US cremation rate by year
• A timeline of cremation in the United States
• Why Americans changed their minds
• The map: where cremation took hold first and last
• From mourning jewelry to memorial keepsakes
• Canada, briefly
• What comes next
• Common questions
• Update history
• Sources

The US cremation rate by year

The chart below draws one line through every year from 1958 to 2025. The figures through 2020 come from the historical table in CANA's 2021 Annual Statistics Report, which CANA compiles from state vital statistics offices; the years since come from CANA's later reports. The dashed segment after 2025 shows CANA's projection for 2030 and NFDA's for 2045. The table under the chart is the record; the chart is the picture.

A note on the two counts. CANA and NFDA measure the same thing with slightly different methods and release schedules, so their numbers for any one year differ by a point or so. NFDA, for instance, put 2025 at 63.4 percent where CANA reported 62.8. This page uses CANA for the historical line because it is the only continuous series that reaches back to the 1950s, and names NFDA wherever its figure is the one being cited.

A timeline of cremation in the United States

Before 1876

For most of American history there was nothing to count. Burial was so nearly universal that cremation existed mainly as an idea in reform circles, argued for on grounds of sanitation and space by physicians and freethinkers who had read about European experiments. The modern movement dates itself from 1873, when the Italian professor Ludovico Brunetti displayed a working cremation apparatus at the Vienna Exposition, and from the founding of the Cremation Society of England the following year (CANA, History of Cremation). Americans were reading the same newspapers. One of them decided to build.

1876 to 1900: LeMoyne, De Palm, and the first crematories

Francis Julius LeMoyne was a physician and abolitionist in Washington, Pennsylvania, a man in his seventies with strong views about public health and a hill on his own land that locals called Gallows Hill. In 1876 he built a small brick crematory there, the first in the United States (Washington County Historical Society). Its first use, on December 6, 1876, was the cremation of Baron Joseph Henry Louis Charles De Palm, a Bavarian nobleman and Theosophist who had asked for it in his will (CANA). The historian Stephen Prothero, whose Purified by Fire remains the standard account, describes that first American cremation as much criticized, and notes that a century ago "Americans almost universally condemned" the practice (Prothero, University of California Press, 2001).

LeMoyne himself was the third person cremated in his building, in 1879. The crematory handled 42 cremations in all before it closed in 1901 (LeMoyne Crematory). Small as that number is, the idea traveled. Cremation societies organized in eastern cities, and in 1884 the Fresh Pond Crematory opened in Queens as the first in New York; it is still operating (Untapped New York). By 1900 the country had about 20 crematories (CANA).

1900 to 1960: slow growth, a Catholic prohibition, and an association

In 1913 Dr. Hugo Erichsen of Detroit called a meeting of cremationists that became the Cremation Association of America. That year there were 52 crematories in North America and just over 10,000 cremations (CANA). The association would be renamed the Cremation Association of North America in 1975, and it is the CANA whose statistics this page relies on.

The same decade brought the strongest formal objection cremation would face in America. Canon 1203 of the 1917 Code of Canon Law forbade cremation for Catholics, and the prohibition held until 1963 (Piam et Constantem, 1963). With Catholics a large and growing share of the population, and most Protestant churches quietly preferring burial, cremation stayed the choice of a small minority: 0.13 percent of deaths in 1922, about 2.5 percent in the late 1930s, and 3.56 percent in 1960 (CANA 2021 report). Four decades, two world wars, and the rate moved three points.

1960s to 1980s: Mitford, the Vatican, direct cremation, and the Funeral Rule

Then 1963 happened twice. In May the Holy Office issued Piam et Constantem, which lifted the Catholic ban so long as cremation was not chosen "as a sign of denial of Christian teaching," while still urging that the faithful be buried (Piam et Constantem; the full story is on our Catholic views on cremation page). That same year Jessica Mitford published The American Way of Death. The first printing of 20,000 copies sold out on release day, the trade press reported funeral spending falling by as much as 30 percent in some areas, and the book led to congressional hearings; Mitford's own suggested remedy was the cooperative memorial society, and readers wrote in by the thousands asking how to start one (Lapham's Quarterly). At the time, about 3 percent of Americans were cremated.

The numbers began to move. The rate reached 5 percent in 1973, nearly a century after LeMoyne, and 10 percent in 1981 (CANA). Part of that was a new kind of business. The Neptune Society, founded in 1973 by a California chiropractor named Charles Denning who scattered ashes at sea from his own boat, sold what came to be called direct cremation: no viewing, no embalming, no casket, the ashes returned to the family (Cremation Institute). It was inexpensive, it was simple, and it fit a West Coast that was already the least churched region in the country.

Federal regulation followed the consumer movement Mitford had started. The Federal Trade Commission's Funeral Rule went into effect on April 30, 1984 and was revised in 1994. It requires every funeral provider to hand out an itemized General Price List, lets families buy only the items they want, and forbids telling a family that state or local law requires a casket for a direct cremation (FTC, Complying with the Funeral Rule). Once a simple cremation had to be priced on the same sheet as a full funeral, the comparison did its own work.

1990s to 2010s: the climb and the crossover

From 1990 the line rises with almost no wobble: 17.13 percent in 1990, 20.66 percent in 1994, 26.2 percent in 2000, 32.4 percent in 2005, 40.8 percent in 2010 (CANA 2021 report). The shape of the curve says something on its own. Each year, roughly one more percent of families chose cremation than the year before, and each of those families had neighbors, siblings, and children who watched it go fine.

The crossover came in the middle of the 2010s, and which year you name depends on whose count you use. NFDA's 2016 Cremation and Burial Report, released July 5, 2016, put the 2015 cremation rate at 48.5 percent against a burial rate of 45.4 percent and announced that cremation had surpassed burial for the first time (NFDA, via Connecting Directors). CANA, which counts cremations as a share of all deaths rather than against burials, recorded 48.6 percent for 2015 and 50.4 percent for 2016, and it dates the crossing of the 50 percent line to 2016 (CANA). Both are right. Cremation became the plurality choice in 2015 and the majority choice in 2016.

2020 to today: the pandemic, water cremation, composting, and the South

The pandemic year broke the curve without bending it. Deaths in the United States jumped from 2,864,849 in 2019 to 3,358,697 in 2020, and cremations rose with them to 1,884,164, or 56.1 percent (CANA 2021 report). CANA later described 2020 and 2021 as "pandemic outliers," and found that once the death count came back down the growth rate had not changed: about 1.5 points a year across 2017 to 2022 (CANA 2023 report). The rate reached 59.0 percent in 2022, 60.6 percent in 2023, 61.8 percent in 2024, and 62.8 percent in 2025 (CANA 2025 report; CANA industry statistics).

What is new is the word "cremation" stretching to cover more than fire. Minnesota licensed alkaline hydrolysis, which uses water and alkali rather than flame, in a bill signed May 12, 2003 (Minnesota SF 1071); the first funeral homes used it in 2011, and CANA counts 26 states and five provinces that permit it as of March 2026 (CANA). Our water cremation page follows that state by state. On May 21, 2019, Washington became the first state to legalize natural organic reduction, or human composting, effective May 1, 2020, in a law that also permitted alkaline hydrolysis (MRSC). And the region that resisted longest is now where the growth is: CANA's 2026 report found that seven of the eleven states of the historic South had moved up a cremation rate bracket, while Mississippi remained the only state under 40 percent (Cremation.Green on the CANA 2026 report).

Why Americans changed their minds

Cost. NFDA's 2023 General Price List study put the median cost of a funeral with viewing and burial at $8,300, and a funeral with viewing and cremation at $6,280; a direct cremation with no service is considerably less than either (NFDA, December 2023). NFDA's own 2024 Cremation and Burial Report says it plainly: the primary reason consumers select direct cremation is its perceived cost effectiveness (NFDA 2024 report). The Funeral Rule made that difference visible on paper in 1984, and it has been visible every year since.

Mobility. The family plot assumes a family that stays. NFDA lists "an increasingly transient population" among the drivers of cremation and notes that "families are growing more geographically separated so the traditional idea of visiting a loved one's gravesite is becoming less relevant" (NFDA 2024 report). Ashes can travel to wherever the children ended up. A grave cannot.

Religion. The Catholic decision of 1963 removed the largest formal objection, and the broader religious landscape kept shifting under it. Pew's Religious Landscape Study, which surveyed 36,908 adults between July 2023 and March 2024, found 62 percent of American adults identifying as Christian, down from 78 percent in 2007, and 29 percent religiously unaffiliated, up from 16 percent (Pew Research Center, 2025). NFDA counts "fewer religious prohibitions against the practice" among its drivers (NFDA 2024 report). Faith still matters: NFDA's 2025 consumer study found more than three quarters of people base funeral decisions at least partly on religious belief (Cremation.Green on the NFDA 2025 study). Our religious views on cremation guide lays out where each tradition stands today.

Environment. This is the newest reason and the most complicated. Flame cremation is not clean; National Geographic cites an industry estimate of about 534.6 pounds of carbon dioxide per cremation, roughly two tanks of gas in an average car (National Geographic, 2019). But conventional burial brings embalming fluid, concrete vaults, and permanent land, and many families weigh cremation as the lighter footprint. In NFDA's 2025 study, 61.4 percent of respondents expressed interest in exploring green disposition options (Cremation.Green), which is the demand behind water cremation and composting laws.

The industry itself. For most of the 20th century funeral homes treated cremation as lost business. That attitude changed as the numbers did. NFDA now publishes an annual Cremation and Burial Report, CANA has tracked the rate from state vital statistics for more than 25 years, and both organizations frame cremation as the base case around which funeral service is being rebuilt (CANA; NFDA). When the people who arrange funerals stopped steering away from cremation, the last friction went out of the choice.

The map: where cremation took hold first and last

Cremation moved across the country from west to east and from north to south, and the map still shows it. In CANA's state figures for 2019, the ten highest rates were all in the West or northern New England: Nevada 80.7 percent, Oregon 78.9, Washington 78.7, Maine 78.2, New Hampshire 76.9, Montana 76.5, Hawaii 73.9, Vermont 72.9, Colorado 72.7, and Wyoming 72.0. The five lowest were Mississippi at 27.9 percent, Alabama 32.6, Kentucky 35.1, Louisiana 37.1, and Utah 40.2 (CANA 2021 report). Nevada was expected to become the first state past 80 percent in 2020, and did.

The pattern lines up with the reasons above. The Western states have the most mobile populations and the lowest rates of religious affiliation; the Deep South has the deepest roots, the strongest Baptist and Catholic traditions, and the family cemeteries to match. Utah is the exception that proves the rule: a Western state with a low rate because of the burial preference of the Latter-day Saints (see Latter-day Saint views on cremation).

The gap is closing from the bottom. By 2025, CANA reported four states above 80 percent, Nevada, Maine, Washington, and New Hampshire, with all five Northwest states at 71 percent or higher; Alabama and Kentucky had crossed 40 percent and Mississippi was the only state still below it (Cremation.Green on the CANA 2026 report). CANA expects cremation to be the preferred choice in every state by 2033, and NFDA projects all 50 states and the District of Columbia past 50 percent by 2035 (CANA; NFDA 2025 report). The South is the last chapter of this story, and it is being written now.

From mourning jewelry to memorial keepsakes

The wish to carry someone is older than cremation in America. In the Victorian era, mourning jewelry was an ordinary part of grief: hair from the person who had died "was woven and knotted to make brooches, bracelets, watchchains, earrings and necklaces," rings held a lock of hair behind onyx or a ring of seed pearls, and black jet was worn for deep mourning. The fashion reached its height after 1861, when Queen Victoria's response to the death of Prince Albert set the pattern for a generation (Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford). Americans followed the same customs, and hair work brooches from the 1860s and 1870s still turn up in family boxes.

What those pieces did was give grief somewhere to live in the ordinary day: on a wrist, at a collar, in a pocket. Modern cremation jewelry descends from them directly. A small, symbolic portion of ashes takes the place a lock of hair once held, sealed inside a pendant or ring so that a person can be kept close through the routine of a life. The impulse is the same one the Victorians knew, and it is a quiet one; there is no right or wrong way to carry a loss. If you want to see what that looks like today, our cremation jewelry collection is laser engraved in Oregon, and the what is cremation jewelry page explains how the pieces work.

Canada, briefly

Canada started later and moved faster. The first modern cremation in Canada took place at Mount Royal Cemetery in Montreal in 1902 (CANA). The rate was 5.89 percent in 1970, roughly where the United States stood, but it reached 32.54 percent by 1990 and 73.1 percent by 2020, a decade and a half ahead of its neighbor (CANA 2021 report). CANA reports a Canadian cremation rate of 77.4 percent for 2025 and projects 81.1 percent for 2030 (CANA). CANA reads Canada as a preview: growth there has slowed as the rate approaches 80 percent, and it expects the United States to follow the same curve (CANA 2023 report).

What comes next

The projections agree on direction and differ on pace. CANA expects 69.1 percent in 2030 and notes that growth is already slowing, from 1.58 to 1.33 points a year (CANA; Cremation.Green). NFDA projects 82.3 percent cremation and 13.0 percent burial by 2045 (NFDA 2025 report). If Canada is the guide, the American line will flatten somewhere in the 80s rather than climb toward 100.

The more interesting question is what "cremation" will mean. Water cremation and human composting are spreading state by state, and a growing share of families ask about them first; our water cremation guide tracks the laws and the costs. The keepsakes families choose afterward are changing too, which is the subject of our annual cremation and cremation jewelry trends page. And the religious picture keeps shifting under all of it, tradition by tradition, which is why we maintain the religious views on cremation resource. This page will get a new row in the table each year when CANA publishes.

Common questions

When did cremation become legal in the United States?

Cremation was never banned by federal law; the first American crematory operated openly in Washington, Pennsylvania from 1876, and the first cremation there was reported nationwide rather than prosecuted (Washington County Historical Society). What changed over time was regulation and acceptance, not legality. Today each state licenses crematories and sets its own rules on authorization, waiting periods, and death certificates, and the federal Funeral Rule of 1984 governs how funeral providers must present prices (FTC).

When did cremation become more common than burial in the US?

In 2015 by NFDA's count and 2016 by CANA's. NFDA reported that cremation surpassed burial in 2015, at 48.5 percent to 45.4 percent (NFDA 2016 report). CANA's series shows the rate crossing 50 percent of all deaths in 2016, at 50.4 percent (CANA 2021 report). Cremation has led every year since.

What percentage of Americans are cremated?

62.8 percent of deaths in the United States ended in cremation in 2025, according to CANA's 2026 Annual Statistics Report; NFDA's estimate for the same year is 63.4 percent (CANA; NFDA). CANA projects 69.1 percent by 2030 and NFDA projects 82.3 percent by 2045.

Who was the first person cremated in America?

Baron Joseph Henry Louis Charles De Palm, a Bavarian nobleman and Theosophist, was cremated on December 6, 1876 in the crematory Dr. Francis Julius LeMoyne had built that year in Washington, Pennsylvania (CANA; LeMoyne Crematory). It was the first cremation in a purpose built modern crematory in the United States. LeMoyne himself was cremated there in 1879, and the building handled 42 cremations before closing in 1901.

Why is cremation so popular now?

Cost, mobility, and religious change, in roughly that order. NFDA's median for a funeral with viewing and cremation was $6,280 in 2023 against $8,300 with burial, and it names cost as the primary reason families choose direct cremation (NFDA; NFDA 2024 report). Families are more spread out, so a grave near home matters less. And the Catholic Church's 1963 permission plus the broader decline in religious affiliation, from 78 percent Christian in 2007 to 62 percent in 2024 (Pew), removed most of the objections that once held the rate under 5 percent.

Which state has the highest cremation rate?

Nevada, which led the country at 80.7 percent in 2019 and became the first state past 80 percent in 2020 (CANA 2021 report). By 2025 CANA counted four states above 80 percent: Nevada, Maine, Washington, and New Hampshire (Cremation.Green on the CANA 2026 report). Mississippi has the lowest rate and was the only state still under 40 percent in 2025.

Did the Catholic Church ever ban cremation?

Yes. Canon 1203 of the 1917 Code of Canon Law forbade cremation for Catholics, and the ban stood until the Holy Office instruction Piam et Constantem in 1963 permitted it, provided it was not chosen as a denial of the resurrection (Piam et Constantem). The Church still prefers burial, and its 2016 instruction Ad resurgendum cum Christo does not permit scattering, dividing ashes among family members, keeping them at home, or preserving them in jewelry (Vatican). Our Catholic views on cremation page covers the details.

Did COVID change the cremation rate?

It changed the count more than the rate. US deaths rose from about 2.86 million in 2019 to about 3.36 million in 2020, and cremations rose with them, but the share of deaths ending in cremation went from 54.6 percent to 56.1 percent, about the usual annual step (CANA 2021 report). CANA calls 2020 and 2021 pandemic outliers and found the underlying growth rate unchanged afterward (CANA 2023 report).

Update history

September 5, 2026: Page published as an evergreen history. It replaces the April 2023 blog post "The History and Significance of Cremation Jewelry: A Journey Through Time," which now redirects here; the Victorian mourning jewelry material from that post was kept and sourced, and the rest was rewritten around the history of cremation in the United States with a sourced rate series. Rates reflect CANA's 2026 Annual Statistics Report (2025 data). (source)

Sources

1. Industry Statistical Information, Cremation Association of North America, 2026
2. History of Cremation, Cremation Association of North America
3. CANA Annual Statistics Report 2021, Historical Cremation Data table (United States and Canada, 1922 to 2020), Cremation Association of North America, 2021
4. CANA Annual Statistics Report 2023, The Cremationist, Vol. 59, No. 2, Cremation Association of North America, 2023
5. CANA's State Cremation Rate Milestones Research, Cremation Association of North America, 2024
6. CANA Releases 2025 Annual Cremation Statistics Report, Connecting Directors, June 4, 2025
7. Biggest Takeaways From the CANA 2026 Annual Statistics Report, Cremation.Green, July 8, 2026
8. 2016 NFDA Cremation and Burial Report Released: Rate of Cremation Surpasses That of Burial in 2015, Connecting Directors, July 5, 2016
9. 2024 NFDA Cremation and Burial Report, National Funeral Directors Association, July 2024
10. NFDA Releases 2025 Cremation and Burial Report, National Funeral Directors Association, October 6, 2025
11. 2023 NFDA General Price List Study, National Funeral Directors Association, December 8, 2023
12. Biggest Takeaways From the NFDA's 2025 Consumer Awareness and Preferences Study, Cremation.Green, 2025
13. LeMoyne Crematory, Washington County Historical Society
14. LeMoyne Crematory, Wikipedia
15. Fresh Pond Crematory, the First Crematorium in New York, Untapped New York
16. Purified by Fire: A History of Cremation in America, Stephen Prothero, University of California Press, 2001
17. Piam et Constantem, Instruction on the Cremation of Bodies, Holy Office, 1963 (Catholic Culture library)
18. Ad resurgendum cum Christo, Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, 2016
19. Fond Farewells, Lapham's Quarterly
20. Neptune Society Review, Cremation Institute, 2026
21. Complying with the Funeral Rule, Federal Trade Commission
22. SF 1071, Human remains alkaline hydrolysis disposal method licensing and regulation, Minnesota Legislature, 2003
23. Alkaline Hydrolysis, Cremation Association of North America, 2026
24. Natural Composting of Human Remains: A First for Washington State, Municipal Research and Services Center, May 2019
25. Decline of Christianity in the US Has Slowed, May Have Leveled Off, Pew Research Center, February 26, 2025
26. Is Cremation Environmentally Friendly? Here's the Science, National Geographic, 2019
27. English Mourning Jewellery, Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford

Educational. Rates are the most recent published figures at the time of the update; see the table for the year and source of each. Cherished Emblems sells cremation jewelry.