Here’s a teaser for you! I was showing our museum DVD to someone recently, and she said, “why does it make it seem like a surprise when they found bodies in 1992 buried on hospital grounds?” She then showed me an image of a book written in 1985:

I had no explanation. Unlike a lot of people, when I don’t know the answer to a question, I admit it. I had no idea how this could be in this book, as I too had believed the common story that the 1992 excavation was a surprise.

So for the last week I have been trying to dig up the details on this mystery. I first came across a speech given by Nell Mitchell, the director and chief historian of our museum. In that speech she mentioned an incident in 1970, when human remains were discovered while digging on site for installation of a water pipe.

And, looking at old copies of the Pueblo Chieftain, I found several stories that mention secret burials on asylum grounds during the final years of Dr. Thombs (1888-1889).

It is an interesting story, and I intend to learn as much as possible about it. I’ve been to the county courthouse, poured through old newspaper stories, and am diving in to our box of documents in our archive about the 1992 and 2000 excavation projects. I plan on publishing a story about it in the Pueblo Lore, but I’m only in the early stages of research for it.