IRON CITY — So many stories lie along with the bodies buried in this southwestern Colorado ghost town’s that sits a few feet away from a present-day campground.
There are the two little girls, sisters , “Born 2 years apart, Died 2 days apart, Buried 2 hands apart.”
There’s the 49-year-old miner, ; cause of death: “Gathering behind ear.”
There’s , dead at in 1885, long before antibiotics existed to treat , a cover-all term for a throat infection.
And , whose marker states the date of his death (9 January 1890), along with the fact that it was “erected by employees of the Union Pacific Railroad.” Were they mourning him, or making sure that he was truly buried?
“There are of in those cemeteries,” said , author of a book about the historic cemeteries and gravesites in Chaffee County, where she has spent much of her life.
“These people weren’t rich and famous, but they have stories to tell. There’s one in Pitkin County that has the town prostitute buried off by herself in a corner. And the bodies aren’t all in cemeteries. When they were working on the road to Leadville, some guy doing backhoe work to make a pull-off carved off the side of a cheap wooden casket, and a guy’s feet fell out. They got the rest of the body, and buried it in Buena.”
She means Buena Vista, which Shaputis shortens to “Buena” and pronounces it “Bew-na,” according to .
Thousands of burial grounds pepper the plains and mountains of Colorado, from established and manicured , including in Denver, to forgotten gravesites discovered by backpackers or road crews. When road crews were working on a U.S. 50 climbing , they unearthed human skeletons.
“They’re still there,” Shaputis said.
“They just dumped the bodies back where they were working, and there’s probably a lot more they never found. I’ve seen the official records of where the bodies were. Those are files that people aren’t allowed to look at, but a friend who worked for the state got me a copy.”
Not all are as tidy and well-documented as the Iron City site, which was part of the restoration projects.
Volunteers spent two summers working on the Iron City cemetery. When they were finished, there were , made by inmates at the Buena Vista , surrounding some of the graves, pathways between the gravesites, and a legend of the cemetery’s residents.
“Used to be that every sizable ranch or farm had a burial ground, back in the old days,” said , director of the Fairmount Foundation.
“When Grandma died, you dug a hole and put her in. In Colorado, there are , , family and places where people were where they died. The Forest Service even has a for what to do when you come across a burial site that’s not documented.”
Not all of Colorado’s burial grounds are burnished with the patina of history. The is one of the newest. Vail was built as a resort and upscale second-home community. With the exception of the Ruder family cemetery, established in the 1800s, there was no burial grounds.
In the mid-1980s, as Vail pioneers were aging, town officials discussed and shelved plans for a cemetery. Finally, 11 acres of open space were dedicated to a memorial park. Town council member Diane Donovan, who initially opposed the memorial park, already has bought stones there for herself, her husband and their children.
Claire Martin: 303-954-1477, cmartin@denverpost.com or twitter.com/byclairemartin
