6 MAY 23-29, 2024 westword.com WESTWORD | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | Civil War veterans of any cemetery in Colo- rado,” about 1,200, according to local his- torian Ray Thal, who has volunteered at Riverside since 2004. Most of the cemetery’s Civil War plots were bought and owned by the Grand Army of the Republic, the frater- nal organization for Union veterans that proclaimed and popularized what would become Memorial Day. Then there are the namesakes. Routt County is named for John Long Routt, who was Colorado’s last territorial governor and the fi rst and seventh governor of the State of Colorado. He’s buried at Riverside, not far from the grave of Miguel Antonio Otero, a delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives for New Mexico and one of the founders of La Junta; Otero County is named for him. Mount Elbert, Colorado’s highest peak, and Elbert County are named for former Colorado governor Samuel Hitt Elbert, who’s buried at Riverside. Next to him, his father-in-law, John Evans — the second territorial governor — who founded Northwestern University and what became the University of Denver; he’s also the namesake of Evans, Colorado, and Evanston, Illinois. Evans used to have a mountain named for him, too, until he was found culpable of creating the conditions that made the horrors at Sand Creek possible; today that peak is Mount Blue Sky. Decidedly less controversial Riverside residents include John Silverthorn, a beloved judge from whom Silverthorne takes its name; Richard Sopris, an early Denver mayor who has a mountain hon- oring him in Pitkin County; and Hiram Bennet, the fi rst territorial representative to Congress, who lent his name to Bennett, Colorado. Don’t forget the fi rsts: Eliza Pickrell Routt, partner to Governor Routt, was a powerful suffragist leader in her own right — and the fi rst woman registered to vote in Colorado. The grave of Alice Polk Hill, Colorado’s fi rst poet laureate, is an amble away; she was the only woman involved in writing the City and County of Denver’s 1904 charter. The founder of Colorado’s fi rst school and fi rst public library, Owen J. Goldrick, is at Riverside. So is Marshall Wilson E. “Bill” Sisty, purportedly Denver’s fi rst law enforcement offi cer, as well as Sadie Likens, Denver’s fi rst police matron and the second female jailer in American history. The place is positively brimming with members of the prestigious Colorado Society of Pioneers, folks who ar- rived in Colorado before February 1861 and were formally recognized for helping shape the place. The grave marker for Tadaatsu Matsudaira claims he was Colorado’s fi rst Japanese resident, while Park Hee Byung’s monument recognizes him as the “founding father of Korean immigrants in Colorado.” Riverside was an early example of an integrated cemetery. “That’s probably the most important thing to say about Riverside Cemetery, that it had no segregation policies,” says Thal, the historian and tour guide. “We pretty much have every prominent person of color in early Denver history at Riverside.” The cemetery’s burial cards constitute historically signifi cant records of Colorado’s African American community, for which comparatively little information exists as a function of structural racism in recordkeep- ing. At Riverside, you can pay respects to Clara Brown, one of Colorado’s fi rst Black settlers; born into slavery, she found freedom in the West, prospering in business while winning wide acclaim for her philanthropy. Or Barney Ford, who escaped slavery via the Underground Railroad and became one of early Denver’s most important business lead- ers. Both are honored with intricate stained- glass displays at the Colorado State Capitol. At Riverside, they’re joined by thousands of Black Coloradans — from Colorado’s fi rst Black baseball player, Oliver Marcelle, to Civil War veterans to beloved friends and family members who shaped neighborhoods and communities the state over. All told, somewhere around 67,000 people from all walks of life rest beneath Riverside’s 77 acres — though the exact number of burials is tough to pin down, since somewhere between a third and a half don’t have grave markers, according to Thal. He also suspects that many grieving families, especially those who lost children, would sneak out to Riverside and bury their loved ones under the cover of night. Interments continue to this day, though they’re all well documented and aboveboard. And it’s largely the relatives of those recent residents who express frustration about the cemetery’s upkeep — or lack thereof. Some- times they blame the owner, the Fairmount Cemetery Company, for favoring its other property, Fairmount Cemetery — billed as a “lush park” in marketing materials — while neglecting Riverside. Others fault the City of Denver, which they believe ought to do something more to maintain a place so im- portant to its history. Universally, they wish it were more verdant. “It’s just terrible to me, I’m going to be honest. It’s ugly, there’s no green,” says Tania Young, whose husband, Ian Young, was laid to rest in a plot at Riverside in 2023. In life, he chose the cemetery because of its historic Russian Orthodox burial ground. “It’d be nice if it was a bit more welcom- ing, or more uplifting, or a place where you could feel more comforted. It’d be nice if they watered the trees to at least keep the trees green,” says James Monte Megas. He and his siblings buried their mother, Betty Collins, there in 2016 at a plot not far from her mother and father. “It’s really depressing. Sometimes in the summer when you go, it’s just like brown dust and dirt,” says Christine Telea, whose twin sister, Liz, was interred there in 2021 near their parents. The great irony at the core of Riverside’s history is that nearly identical pleas for greener pastures were the reason the place came to be. While Riverside is Denver’s oldest operating cemetery, it’s not Denver’s oldest cemetery. That distinction goes to what’s now known as Cheesman Park, which is still home to more bodies than you might expect as a function of the years it spent fi rst as Mount Prospect Cemetery and later the Denver City Cemetery. Opened in 1858, by 1874 Den- ver City Cemetery had become “a boneyard that is the most shunted and neglected suburb in the city — given over to owls and bats,” according to Riverside’s fi rst prospectus. Tastes had changed as the intricacies of the Victorian era took hold; earlier cemeteries, such as the Denver City Cemetery, were designed to be sparse — so much so that it was nicknamed “Boot Hill.” It was a place to store remains, out of sight and out of mind — but it wasn’t somewhere that people were clamoring to visit. “That’s how Riverside started. They didn’t want their loved ones to be buried in this ugly-looking place anymore,” says Annett L. Student, the author of Denver’s Riverside Cemetery: Where History Lies, an exhaustively researched book on Riverside’s history. Incorporated on April 1, 1876 — months before Colorado became a state — it was modeled after the leafy Mount Auburn Cemetery near Boston, the nation’s fi rst garden cemetery, according to Riverside’s successful 1994 application to the National Register of Historic Places. Riverside became Colorado’s fi rst park-like burying ground, a pioneer of the format that comes to mind whenever anybody says “cemetery” to this day. Gravesites, as described in the National Register of Historic Places listing, were “laid out in well-kept lawns surrounded by fl ow- ers, trees, and winding drives.” Riverside accepted its fi rst burial on June 1, 1876: Henry Walton, whose white marble obelisk still stands, though it disintegrates a little more with each passing year. By that July, Dr. John H. Morrison had joined Wal- ton as the fi fth burial, a loss — or perhaps an addition — made poignant by the fact that Morrison was the original owner of the land beneath what would become the cemetery. So successful were Riverside’s initial marketing efforts that families began trans- ferring their loved ones there from the Den- ver City Cemetery. The Grand Army of the Republic started moving Civil War veterans into its plot at Riverside from various burial places in 1886; Silas Soule’s remains made the trip from City Cemetery at some point not long after, though the thirteen-foot monu- ment over his original grave didn’t go with him, replaced instead by a spartan veteran’s headstone in the traditional style. By August 1885, the landscaping had blos- somed to the point that the Rocky Mountain News called Riverside Cemetery “one of the most attractive points in the vicinity of the metropolis.” Its lawns were described as “velvet-like…perhaps the fi nest in the natu- ral world,” with “many thousand trees now growing.” Jerome Smiley noted in his 1910 History of Denver that Riverside was a “most beautiful city of the dead, adorned with shrub- bery and lawns and costly monuments.” A 1923 promotional pamphlet for the place bragged about its newly rebuilt irrigation system and pumping plant. “More burials are made at Riverside than at any other cemetery in or near Denver because of its accessibility, convenience, and attractiveness,” it claimed. So how did Riverside go from a sumptu- ous park celebrating life to a barren fi eld re- minding visitors that death comes for us all? It’s tempting to think of a cemetery as a place suspended in Tomb With a View continued from page 5 continued on page 8 The Fairmount Cemetery Company continues to invest in Riverside Cemetery, including this new marker at its entry; tombstones inside date back to 1876. EVAN SEMÓN EVAN SEMÓN
