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| CHEESMAN PARK Photo credit: Cyrus McCrimmon - The Denver Post (We love this photo Cyrus! If you have more we'd love to see.) |
There are those of us who simply love GRAVEYARDS. The sense of history, the unease, the silence... It is so interesting to imagine all the scenarios that might have characterized a person’s life between those two dates carved in the stone. We can spend hours taking photographs, reading epitaphs or just sitting quietly, awaiting something more. Similarly, CEMETERIES demand quiet respect and a creative mind that can appreciate the mental candy that death serves up. In case you’re curious, cemeteries differ from graveyards primarily because they are larger, and they are publicly rather than religiously affiliated. In our opinion here at Denver Subculture it is the BURIAL GROUND that evokes the greatest sense of the macabre. Urns, coffins, caskets, and many of the other traditional vessels of death were often foregone when the dead were interred in burial grounds. For one reason or another, an overwhelming number of bodies might suddenly require disposal and the only reasonable solution under the circumstances was to bury masses of people together.
In the middle of the 19th century Denver's wild west ways were catching up with the city and bodies were becoming a burden. This problem gave way to the Mount Prospect cemetery - Denver’s first. Although the task of burying so many bodies was accomplished, it seems that record keeping was not a high priority. This proved to be a huge problem when a handful of decades later, Denver decided that the site would be better suited as a park. To facilitate the plan the city began exhuming the remains, only to find that a lack of records wasn’t the only problem. Apparently the undertaker associated with the task was less than respectable and took it upon himself to chop the bodies up in order to cram some of them into coffins. Essentially he combined the concept of cemetery and burial ground in a grotesque example of efficiency! Needless to say the removal of the bodies was a slipshod effort that was neither precise nor thorough.
This is great news for those of you in the Denver Subculture who love a good dose of creepy. Guess where this all went down…Cheesman Park! That’s right, one of your favorite places to meander is a great place to mingle with a skeleton or two. As a result of the aforementioned ‘sloppy body incident’, skeletons are found in Cheesman Park to this day. Just last year FOUR were found. So on one of the upcoming warm winter days that uncharacteristically keep occurring, skip the tired metal detector and become a bone collector for the afternoon. While the predictable other Denverites are tossing a Frisbee with the dog or getting hammered on a bar patio, you can be spending your time on a treasure hunt like no other. Fuck the mainstream!
(Disclaimer: Denver Subculture read about the components of this post in various accounts. Not all accounts were in agreement, leaving us uncertain as to the exact dates and names associated with the cemetery and park. As such, we recommend that you further investigate if you want to become an expert. We whole heartedly feel that the point of importance is the fact that DEAD BODIES are surfacing at Cheesman Park!!! Rad!)
In the middle of the 19th century Denver's wild west ways were catching up with the city and bodies were becoming a burden. This problem gave way to the Mount Prospect cemetery - Denver’s first. Although the task of burying so many bodies was accomplished, it seems that record keeping was not a high priority. This proved to be a huge problem when a handful of decades later, Denver decided that the site would be better suited as a park. To facilitate the plan the city began exhuming the remains, only to find that a lack of records wasn’t the only problem. Apparently the undertaker associated with the task was less than respectable and took it upon himself to chop the bodies up in order to cram some of them into coffins. Essentially he combined the concept of cemetery and burial ground in a grotesque example of efficiency! Needless to say the removal of the bodies was a slipshod effort that was neither precise nor thorough.
This is great news for those of you in the Denver Subculture who love a good dose of creepy. Guess where this all went down…Cheesman Park! That’s right, one of your favorite places to meander is a great place to mingle with a skeleton or two. As a result of the aforementioned ‘sloppy body incident’, skeletons are found in Cheesman Park to this day. Just last year FOUR were found. So on one of the upcoming warm winter days that uncharacteristically keep occurring, skip the tired metal detector and become a bone collector for the afternoon. While the predictable other Denverites are tossing a Frisbee with the dog or getting hammered on a bar patio, you can be spending your time on a treasure hunt like no other. Fuck the mainstream!
(Disclaimer: Denver Subculture read about the components of this post in various accounts. Not all accounts were in agreement, leaving us uncertain as to the exact dates and names associated with the cemetery and park. As such, we recommend that you further investigate if you want to become an expert. We whole heartedly feel that the point of importance is the fact that DEAD BODIES are surfacing at Cheesman Park!!! Rad!)
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