I’ve been spending some time now and then on trying to solve the mystery of the Colorado State Hospital cemeteries.

Some research does best if you give it a lot of time. On this topic I want to take my time and let it organize itself in my brain (during a good night’s sleep, usually). When I get more of a handle on this I’ll probably write it all out, either in a Pueblo LORE article, or in a book–or both.

Cemetery #1 was not the cemetery they excavated in the 1990s and 2000s. That was cemetery #2.

Cemetery #1 was left alone. It’s exact location is really unknown, but it was known to be near the power plant of the state hospital. They did, however, create a little monument for it. A while ago Nancy Hall and I ventured out to find it (Nell had pictures of it in the archives, but we wanted to see it in person).

Here it is. I took these pictures of it on a beautiful Summer day:

And here’s a closeup:

The location on Google Maps is HERE.

NOTE: I should be posting on here more often, as it has been quite busy at the Museum this Summer. Of course, that’s also sort of an excuse as to why I haven’t been posting that much. But we have a new volunteer (Barbara), who is awesome, a new intern (Olivia) who is awesome, and we have collectively done a lot of work, along with Nancy, making improvements to the museum, which was already a hidden treasure.

We know have three to five short videos easily shown to museum patrons. These range from a short documentary on the state hospital dairy farm to short documentaries that allow the viewer to see the hospital in 1964–complete with footage of patients and staff members in the first few years after decentralization. This was a time when mental health practices were changing at an almost alarming rate.

Barbara is a great addition to our team, having worked in the mental health field. She has been helping me to understand the big picture on subjects like what occurred around the time of decentralization.

I’m still surprised Barbara didn’t get my reference to The Night of the Living Dead….