Places in Colorado: The Alpine Cemetery
Summary
If visiting St. Elmo it may be worth a stop to check out the Alpine Cemetery if you are someone with a deep interest in history. However, even those who have a deep interest in history may not find this cemetery all that interesting simply because so few of the graves can be read and the ones that are readable feature no one of particular interest in the region’s history.
User Review
( votes)Basic Information
- Name: Alpine
- Where: Colorado, USA
- Population: Ghost Town
- More Information: GhostTowns.com
Narrative
After visiting the historic ghost town of St. Elmo, Colorado I also made a stop to check out the old Alpine Cemetery. This cemetery is all that remains of the old mining settlement of Alpine. The below Google Map shows the location of Alpine and its cemetery:
Much like St. Elmo, Alpine rose up along the banks of Chalk Creek around 1874 due to the silver and gold finds in the area. At this time the settlement was nothing more than prospectors and railroad workers living in tents. By 1877 Alpine was registered as an official town and a number of buildings were constructed as more people moved in. An 1880 census showed that Alpine had 503 residents with 419 of the being males and the other 94 females. The vast majority of the residents listed their occupation as miners and prospectors. However, the construction of the rail line to nearby St. Elmo caused many of Alpine’s residents to move further up the valley to the more lucrative mines and the growing town. By 1885 Alpine was largely a ghost town. Unlike St. Elmo which had a few hearty people stay on to maintain the buildings over the years Alpine was left to decay to where the town is now gone, but its cemetery still remains:
It is believed that the cemetery began in 1877 and had bodies buried here until 1883 when burials were all moved to St. Elmo. It is believed that 39 people were buried here, however there is evidence that a few more people were buried here passed this date. Study of the site is complicated by the fact that about a century ago a major mud and rock slide off the slopes of Mt. Princeton washed out most of the cemetery. A repeat event happened in 2007. Since then what grave site researchers have been able to find have had various wood tombstone markers put in place of the lost headstones:
Even the markers that were not washed away are still highly eroded and difficult to read such as this one for a Joe Hudson who it looks like the marker says was born in 1837 and died in 1879:
According to the Colorado Directory of Mines, the Hayes Mine in Alpine was owned by Benjamin Riggins and a Joseph Hudson. Their silver claim was 300 by 1500 feet and filed in 1877 three miles outside of Alpine. Is this the same Joe Hudson buried in the cemetery? I think it is a reasonable assumption that it probably is the same person. According to this website Hudson was also an original settler of Alpine who was killed by an avalanche. This just shows what a danger avalanches as well as rock slides would have been long ago for these early pioneers in the Colorado Rockies.
There were few gravestones in very good condition such as this one for John Peck who was born in 1812 in England and died in 1881:
Probably the saddest sight at the cemetery is the grave to the 3-year old Mattie who was the daughter of T.A. and S.C. Pitts:
According to this website Mattie was the daughter of a local miner. The information board near the cemetery did not say how Mattie died, but that her parents moved out of Alpine to Mesa, Colorado after the girl’s death. The locals that live in various cabins in the area have apparently taken a liking to the little girl since they have decorated her grave with number of decorations, toys, and candy. Unfortunately tombstones like this are a common sight in historic cemeteries like this. It really brings home how different the mortality rate for young children back then was compared to what it is now due to sickness. When I hear people complain about flu shots and other features of modern medicine I can’t help, but think that the people in these historic settlements would have loved to have access to such medicine to save the lives of their kids.
Conclusion
I Anyway I found the cemetery of interest and spent about 30 minutes reading the information board and wandering around the cemetery. The next time I am in the area I will definitely stop by again and leave something for Mattie as well.
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About The Author
Dobbs
I am a avid hiker with a love for travel and the outdoors. I currently call the Evergreen State of Washington my home.
I thnk going to these out of the way cemeteries and places like this is very interesting…if you just sit and be very quiet and soak up the atmosphere, its very refreshing…I once went to a cemetery in Meers, Oklahoma that you could hear actual crying..it was a very lonely place and I could not stand to be there..some day maybe you should venture forth and go there…
Thank you for sharing your trips and excursions with us…its very thoughful.We get to see places we would not be able to see otherwise.
My wife and I drove through Alpine and St. Elmo a few years ago. Her Grand Father was born in Alpine in 1882. Her Great Grand father came from Norway and settled in Alpine. He mined all his life. Her Grand Father mined all his life also, all over Colorado and parts of Wyoming. I think they both died penny less. B.R.
Following that debris slide in 2007, a grant was awarded to do a search of graves covered by the slide. One part of the grant covered ground penetrating radar which proved ineffective. The other operation featured four teams of cadaver dogs coming together to do what they could in locating hidden/covered graves. The results were astounding. The cemetery was divided into quarters, with each team of dogs searching, alerting on graves till each area was exhausted and at that point each team rotated to a different section, repeated until each dog team had searched its territory. The end result had… Read more »
Eric, thank you for sharing the information. Pretty amazing what the cadaver dogs were able to detect after all this time.