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Indian Spring Cemetery, resting near the banks of Alligator Creek, is Charlotte County's second oldest cemetery. It dates back to 1886 when former Punta Gorda City Councilman James L. Sandlin (1858-1903) donated the land for a public cemetery. Sandlin's friend Albert Waller Gilchrist, a Punta Gorda founder and Florida's 20th governor, recorded the first plat of Indian Spring Cemetery in 1886 and serves as his final resting place as well as Sandlin's.
The name Indian Spring may predate the platting of the cemetery. The cemetery grounds once surrounded a small spring and this area is thought to have been used by indigenous peoples as a fresh water source. Noted simply as the "Creek Cemetery" in tum of the century obituaries, this burial ground, bordering scenic Alligator Creek, was also known briefly in the late 1920s as "Pineapple River Cemetery."
A partial list of census records and newspaper reports, lists the names of Charlotte Harbor households established prior to 1900. Of the 95 early settlers recorded, 49 are buried in Indian Spring Cemetery, and many more have siblings, descendants or other relatives buried here. The 40-acre cemetery, which lies on the outskirts of Punta Gorda, has been owned and maintained by Charlotte County since 1948. In the mid-1980s volunteers with the Charlotte County Genealogical Society took on the task of researching the burial records of Indian Springs and mapping known interments, many of which are unmarked. The Society's cemetery committee verified the sites of over 2,500 burials, several previously unknown, some of which remain unidentified.
Indian Spring Cemetery is also the final resting place for over 360 known veterans who earned multiple silver stars and purple hearts. Another honorable mention is the recorded names of local soldiers who either died during active military service or were recorded as MIA during the Korean War but are remembered by their families in the cemetery. Veterans in Indian Spring Cemetery served in the Civil War, the Spanish American War, World War I, World War II including the Battle of the Bulge and the Pacific War, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. Also noted in the Cemetery are men who served in the Michigan Calvary of the Grand Army of the Republic, or worked in Base Hospitals, or as Confederate Soldiers, as Navy Seabees, or served on the USS Idaho, with the Merchant Marines, the National Guard, the Secret Service, or the CIA.
Indian Spring is divided into 14 sections; Platted in a basic rectangular grid with straight paths bisecting the sections, the southern boundary of the western portion is irregular, following the creek's border. Section "0" has served as "Potter's field," designated for indigent burials while "Babyland" is subdivided into small lots reserved for interments of small children and infants.