Eilene Lyon has a curious hobby.
“Going to antique stores and picking up old photographs that have a name on them, and I research these people and I write about them on the blog,” she explained from her longtime home in Durango. “The aim is to return the photographs to relatives. That’s been very rewarding to do.”
Equally rewarding has been her past couple of decades researching her family history and genealogy, the springboard to her first book. The New York Times praised “Fortune’s Frenzy,” released in 2023, as “a fresh look at the California gold rush.”
Now comes Lyon’s latest, “What Lies Beneath Colorado: Pioneer Cemeteries and Graveyards.” The book is part of a series exploring some of the oldest burial places across the West and the stories of people interred.
“That was right up my alley,” Lyon said. “Going around and writing about dead people from Colorado history.”
For any casual student of state history, many names in the book will register. Names like Evans, Tabor, Palmer, Moffat and Meers.