Exploring Hillside cemetery, a living record of Silverton
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SILVERTON, Colo. — North of Silverton, on a slope overlooking the town, lies Hillside Cemetery. About 3,000 graves mark the hillside, some with names, others blank. The cemetery stands as a record of Silverton’s history dating back to the late 19th century.
In the 1950s, Freda Peterson began visiting the cemetery with her three children to let them run off some energy. While they played, she started documenting the graves and researching old newspapers to match headstones with obituaries.
Her passion project lasted 40 years. The result was a 900-page collection detailing the lives of more than 3,000 people buried at Hillside. Peterson also compiled another book about those who died in Silverton but were buried elsewhere.
“Not only do we have a study of the cemetery, but we have a lot of genealogical information too,” said Beverly Rich, chairman of the San Juan County Historical Society.
As a mining town, Silverton has seen many booms and busts. During hard times, families often left to find work elsewhere, leaving loved ones’ graves untended, Rich said.
For the past 45 years, the San Juan County Historical Society has maintained Hillside Cemetery, cleaning headstones and restoring deteriorating grave sites.
What do the graves tell us?
Silverton sits on the traditional ancestral lands of the Ute people. In the 1860s, settlers arrived after the discovery of gold and silver along the Animas River.
The 1873 Brunot Agreement between the Ute tribes and the U.S. government led to more mining and the forced displacement of the Ute people from the San Juan Mountains. Silverton was officially established a year later, in 1874.
The first burial at Hillside Cemetery was 4-year-old Rachel E. Farrow, who died on Aug. 27, 1875. Her grave is near the front gate, surrounded by those of other early settlers. Many people from the 1870s and 1880s died of pneumonia, reflecting the harsh mountain living conditions.
Silverton quickly became a melting pot. People from Scotland, Sweden, Finland, Wales, Russia and Italy came seeking mining work. The town also had Chinese and Black communities.
When the railroad reached Silverton in 1882, it brought growth — banks, hotels, saloons and more buildings. Rich called 1900 to 1910 “the glittering decade,” a time of prosperity and peak population. In 1900, Silverton’s population reached 2,342, about three times what it is today.
Hardships in the mines
Mining, the main industry in the early days of Silverton, was dangerous, to put it lightly. In 1906 alone, 24 people died in snow slides across San Juan County. A January avalanche buried five men at the Sunnyside Mine, and another in March killed 12 at the Shenandoah Mine.
Beyond avalanches, miners also died in “dynamite explosions,” were “blown to atoms in a mine,” or “crushed in mill pulley,” according to the graves.
Epidemics and loss
In 1918, the influenza epidemic killed about 130 residents, roughly 10% of Silverton’s population, in less than two weeks.
“It was so scary because nobody knew what was going on. People were just dying,” said Rich.
Bodies piled up so quickly that there wasn’t time to dig individual graves. A mass grave was created to bury the victims together. In 1969, the Historical Society placed a memorial marker at the site to honor them.
Exclusion and remembrance
Chinese immigrants arrived in Silverton in the 1880s, but by 1902 tensions had escalated. Many from the miner’s union thought the Chinese were taking over their jobs. That May, the Chinese residents were driven out of town in what the newspaper called a “murderous attack.”
Chinese people were the only group denied from burial at Hillside Cemetery, Rich said. Many were buried along the river in town, though no traces of those graves remain. The Historical Society later installed a marker in Hillside to commemorate their presence and persecution.
The cemetery holds tales of tragedy, and some peculiar ends. One man, Charlie Carney, died on a pool table in 1891 at age 31.
“[The cemetery] is a history book,” Rich said. “It tells the story of a place that was so remote, and yet we have people from all over the world come and try to make a livin
Type of story: News
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Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. To read more about why you can trust the journalism of Rocky Mountain PBS, please visit our editorial standards and practices page.