LOUISVILLE (WHAS11) -- Cave Hill Cemetery says it's already seeing increasing crowds at Muhammad Al's grave site and they expect the traffic to continue as the one year of his passing comes on Saturday.
Officials say last June, thousands of visitors poured into Cave Hill in the weeks following Ali's burial on June 10, 2016. The cemetery tells us the Ali family had pre-arranged burial plans about eight years before his death.
Cave Hill President and CEO Gwen Mooney say the cemetery still sees about one to two hundred additional visitors a day to Ali's plot and the weekend visitor numbers have tripled, all to see The Champ's final resting place.
“We've had rocking chairs left here, a lot of boxing gloves, elephants, a lot of things that symbolize Muhammad Ali's life and the people that he met. So what happens is we've collected all of those items and we store all of those items, so we have them here at storage at Cave Hill Cemetery.”
The cemetery says the Ali family hired a private landscaper in addition to cemetery staff that helps keep flowers planted and blooming all year long.
Mooney says Kentucky legend Colonel Sanders is another high profile person buried at Cave Hill but she says no one will likely match the magnitude of Muhammad Ali and the crowds that come to pay their respects.