LAFAYETTE, Colo. — The city of Lafayette is weighing whether to permanently ban casket burials at its only cemetery after a ground-penetrating radar survey found so many unmarked graves that officials can no longer confidently identify open plots. It’s a decision that’s leaving families who bought burial rights years ago concerned and worried.
The Lafayette Cemetery has not sold plots since 2001, the city said, but about 150 people still own one or more. The city commissioned an $80,000 survey that identified roughly 3,500 potential burial sites, far more than the 2,200 visible markers on the surface, the city said. In February, a crew digging what was believed to be an open plot hit another casket already in the ground.
Kathi Erickson has visited the cemetery multiple times per week since her husband David died in 2016. Her parents are buried there. Her grandparents, brother, aunts and uncles are too. She and David bought their plots in 1987, after her brother died. Her sister bought hers five years earlier when her husband died…