Review by Ed Quillen
Colorado Cemeteries – April 1999 – Colorado Central Magazine
From the Grave – A Roadside Guide to Colorado’s Pioneer Cemeteries
by Linda Wommack
Published in 1998 by Caxton Press
ISBN 0-87004-386-2
NEARY EVERY settlement has one, and the same holds for hundreds of abandoned townsites sprinkled across Colorado. Often and perhaps appropriately, the graveyard is all that remains of a “ghost town.”
Much of what we know about ancient civilizations we learn from their tombs, and as From the Grave makes clear, we can learn plenty about our own geographic forebears by visiting a pioneer cemetery.
The tombstones bear names — German, Cornish, Irish, Spanish — that inform us of ethnic origins. The dates of death tell us when the community thrived. When multiple stones bear close or identical dates, we find the record of tragedy — epidemics (six children from the same Fowler-area family died of diphtheria in March of 1879), avalanches, mine disasters, train wrecks.
That old-time religion appears in the divisions of cemeteries into Jewish, Protestant, and Roman Catholic sections. The social and economic status of life continues into eternity, from the vanished wooden markers of forlorn Woodpecker Hill in Cañon City, where unclaimed penitentiary inmates were buried, to the elaborate marble mausoleum of Verner Z. Reed, a Cripple Creek millionaire interred in Denver’s Mt. Olivet Cemetery.
The networks of life are often preserved in death. Family plots are usually obvious, but what about all those old tombstones that look like trees? Fraternal organizations of the 19th century often functioned as a form of life insurance. One was the Woodmen of the World, whose members got a $100 death benefit for a tombstone — one that often resembled a tree.
Many of our older but still thriving cemeteries preserve a Victorian acquaintance with death that we moderns avoid. Cemeteries were laid out like parks, with broad drives, irrigation, and imported exotic trees — a style that has fallen out of favor now that we try to conserve water and labor (by making all tombstones flat).
Linda Wommack’s From the Grave offers that lore and much more as it provides a tour of Colorado cemeteries from Julesburg to Durango. Her 474-page book is organized geographically in quadrants defined by Interstates 25 and 70, and inside each quadrant, she generally follows the highways — a sensible approach for a roadside guide.
With each major or interesting cemetery along the way, she provides a brief history of the cemetery itself, and short biographies of some of its occupants. Here’s a sample:
Saguache Cemetery
Located southeast of Saguache. From First Street, take the Cemetery Road south of town. The cemetery is one mile down the well-paved road, on the east side.
The Saguache Cemetery land was deeded to the city in 1915, after forty years of operation. The oldest known tombstone is that of an infant, who died at birth on November 25, 1868. The cemetery is laid against a natural up slope to the hill at the east end. Landscaping includes a beautiful row of aspen trees lining the west end, planted in the mid 1980s. There are several areas where the only monuments are simple rocks, with no inscriptions. New additions include the gateway at the entrance of the cemetery, sponsored by the Hayes family in 1996.
Then come brief biographies of Franklin Clark (1834-1901), James P. Downer (1818-1898), John Lawrence (1835-1908), Nathan Russell (1831-1895) and Johnnie O’Neil (1852-1927), of whom we read:
The redheaded Irish saloon keeper is known in history as Saguache’s jockey in the famous horse race of August 21, 1880. O’Neil rode the town’s beloved racehorse “Red Buck.”
The opponent was a thoroughbred named “Little Casino,” raced in Iowa, Kansas, and Leadville. Money was placed on Saguache’s “Red Buck” to win, but he lost. It was the opinion of many, including John Lawrence, that O’Neil threw the race.
Tribute was eventually given to O’Neil, although posthumously. His tombstone reads: “Red Buck’s Rider.”
He is buried in Block N, Lot 57
Wommack gives scores of cemeteries this thorough treatment, and the others, generally small graveyards off the beaten path, are listed at the ends of the appropriate chapters.
She also stresses visitor etiquette, and provides detailed instructions for making rubbings from tombstones. And there’s a chapter on interesting epitaphs, including that of Pearl I. Stubbings (1914-1985) in Littleton: “See, I told you I was sick.” (We also learn that Alfred Packer is buried in Littleton; if you want to know where a famous Coloradan rests in peace, you’ll probably find it here.)
This book will serve as a good reference, as well as a guide, on account of its thorough and useful index, along with detailed source notes.
I did find some nits to pick. Wommack’s writing is sometimes choppy, and her collateral history isn’t always solid.
For instance, Populist Gov. Davis H. “Bloody Bridles” Waite (1825-1901, buried in Aspen) didn’t get the nickname from “his iron-rule approach to state government,” but from an 1893 speech in which he declared “it is better, infinitely better, that blood should flow to the horse’s bridles, rather than our national liberties should be destroyed.”
But overall, this is a fine book about an oft- neglected feature of our cultural landscape, and one that should inspire more than a few respectful trips to the graveyard — an interesting, important, and informative place, substantially enhanced by From the Grave.
— Ed Quillen