It’s incredibly easy for a cemetery to enter a death spiral.
Look no further than Denver’s oldest continuously operating burying ground, Riverside Cemetery, celebrating its 150th anniversary this year.
Amble around the 77-acre site and you’ll come across some of the boldest-faced names in Colorado history without even trying. There are the namesakes, such as Gov. John Long Routt, Gov. Samuel Hitt Elbert, Mayor Richard Sopris, Del. Miguel Antonio Otero and Judge John Silverthorn. There are the trailblazers, including suffragist leader Eliza Pickrell Routt; Colorado’s first poet laureate, Alice Polk Hill; and early Black entrepreneurs and philanthropists Clara Brown and Barney Ford. And don’t forget the heroes: three Medal of Honor recipients; 1,200 Civil War veterans, and one Silas Soule – the Union Army captain who refused orders and blew the whistle on the Sand Creek Massacre…