NEDERLAND — “Remember friends as you pass by, As you are now, so once was I. As I am now so you must be, Prepare for death and follow me.” So reads the epitaph on the gravestone of Mary Webster, deceased 1879.

The ghost town of Caribou was occupied from 1870 to 1917. In the summer of 1871, Caribou boasted several hotels and boarding houses, two billiard halls, one restaurant, five grocery stores, three bakeries, four saloons, one dry goods store, one millinery shop, two blacksmith shops, one livery stable, one meat market, a telegraph office that doubled as the police court and a photographic gallery.

The broken base of Mary Webster's (1840-1879) headstone and commemorative plaque placed by Friends of the Caribou Cemetery and Nederland Area Historical Society.

Photo by Brian Alers

Silver production peaked in 1875 after construction of the processing mill in Middle Boulder (Nederland) in 1873. Historic estimates of the population of Caribou in the mid-1870s range as high as 3,000 but that number seems unlikely: The census of 1880 counted only 549 residents in Caribou. The real number of residents during its heyday was likely somewhere between 1,000 to 1,500 people.

The Great Caribou Lode, west of Nederland, was not the first silver district discovered in the Colorado Territory. But for more than a decade, it was the queen of Colorado’s silver camps.  From 1869-1880, the mine produced at least $1 million worth of silver, lead and gold. The Caribou mine operated almost continuously from 1870 until it was closed in 1883, and except for some minor production in 1891-1893 it never reopened.

The silver panic of 1893 squashed all hope of reviving Caribou. Three fires ravaged Caribou in 1879, 1899, and 1905. There was even an earthquake in 1903. After the third fire, wind, and snow wiped out the remaining buildings and most of the rest of the population moved away. The town of Caribou hung on until the Caribou Post Office finally closed for good in 1917.  

The Caribou Cemetery is about all that is left of the thriving mining community of Caribou. It lies on the side of Idaho Hill just north of the ghost town, five miles west of Nederland at 10,000 feet above sea level. It has endured the harsh winters, and unpredictable winds born on the Continental Divide.

At this altitude, the dead were buried whenever they could be buried. Some of the miners were hardly known except for their names. Friends would bring them down from the mines or from their cabins and after a short service, the casket would be carried up the hill to the cemetery, sometimes not to be buried until the ground thawed in the spring. Graves were often excavated with a blast of dynamite. 

No one knows the total number of people buried there. Any record of the men, women, and children buried in the Caribou Cemetery has been long lost to time. There are likely many unmarked graves. Many of the town's miners had traveled the seas from Cornwall, only to die underground or see their children succumb to scarlet fever and diphtheria. 

The Caribou Cemetery gate.

Photo by Brian Alers

Intricately carved gravestones marked their final resting places in the Caribou Cemetery, until a harsh environment and vandalism took its toll. The cemetery has crumbled and decayed. Wooden markers and the fences around graves have rotted. Iron fences have rusted and twisted. Broken off headstones and sunken depressions are all that remains of most gravesites.

There were at least 29 recorded burials at the Caribou Cemetery from 1875 to 1898; 19 were children and three were of unknown age. The stone and wooden grave markers record at least two diphtheria and scarlet fever outbreaks in the early days of the Camp, including seven deaths in 1879.

Since then, newspaper accounts from the 1870s and 1880s added a few more names of those who died in Caribou but are not accounted for elsewhere. Nine more burials took place between 1958 and 2020, however only one has a plaque with a name on it: Adah S. Landon, aged 72.

In September 2023, two stones were added to mark the grave of Thomas S. Hendricks, aged 70, who died and was buried at the Caribou Cemetery in 2020. A plaque with his name and dates will be added.

There are no records that show when the first graves were dug, but the earliest known burials were in 1875. That year, there were six known burials, but only three have been located. The earliest burial took place on August 28, 1875, with 27-year-old William Hicks, a miner from Cornwall, England, who died in a mining accident caused by a cartridge explosion.

Sara Collins, age 36, and Mary E. Loyd, age three, have been located. The whereabouts of the other two known gravesites from 1875 (Joseph J. Murphy and Emma A. Redrup) are unknown. There were two known graves from 1876, Infant Gouge, less than a year old and John H. Johns, a miner killed in an accident (both unlocated). A child, Richard Pearce, age three, was the only known person buried in 1877 (unlocated). The only known burial in 1878 was another child, Albert W. Lunsford, age one (located). 

In 1879 there were nine known burials including the children of Samuel and Margaret Richards; Alice May, age three, Willie, age eight, and Anna, age 10, who passed away in four days during a diphtheria outbreak the first week of July 1879. They are memorialized on a single obelisk shaped headstone that has been replaced.

Margaret Richards had 15 children, and she outlived eight of them when she died in 1925. Mary Webster, age 39, wife of Joseph Webster from Cornwall, England, died during the same diphtheria outbreak as the Richards children. The other known burials from 1879 are Thomas P. Cosgrove, age three, Margaret Perkins, age 45, and James T. Williams, age 30 (located), and Emma George, age three, and William F. Stevens age unknown (unlocated).

In 1880, there were two known burials, Ellen Ellingham, age 28 (relocated to another cemetery out of state), and Frances Ann Pugh, age 62 (located), Frances was married to Ulysses Pugh, an old prospector, miner, bear and elk hunter who, with Samual Conger gave the journalist Grace Greenwood a tour of the Caribou mine in October 1871.

There were three known children buried in 1881, Joseph J. Davey and Joseph James, both less than a year old, and John Retallack, age four, none of these graves have been located.

The 1882 gravesite of an infant, Agnes Julia Ewert, aged eight months, the first child of Methodist pastor Rev. Albert Louis Theodore Ewert (born in Germany, 1853), and Laura Hildegard Miller from Illinois was recovered from the woods and has been replaced. Many of the Cornish miners were Methodist.

There were no known burials for five years until 1887 when the infant Baby Mckenzie, who was less than a year old (unlocated), was buried. In 1896, the infant Baby Lemon who was less than a year old, died in a Caribou house fire in 1896. She was the daughter of Rose and Harry Lemon. (Harry was later divorced by his wife on the grounds of cruelty, nonsupport, and being a habitual drunkard.)

The last known historic burial during the final days of Caribou was an infant, Beverly Smith, less than a year old (unlocated), who was buried in 1898. Baby Spanner and John Webster (ages unknown) were buried between 1870-1880, and the two Anderson children (ages unknown) were buried between 1875-1885. Of these grave sites, only the Spanner baby has been located.

There were no known burials for 60 years, and then there were nine known burials between 1958 and 2020. Only one had a plaque with a name on it (Adah S. Landon, aged 72). In September 2023, two stones were added to mark the grave of Thomas S. Hendricks, aged 70, who died and was buried at the Caribou Cemetery in 2020.

In 1932, the cemetery's then-current property owner wrote to a colleague of the burial ground's deterioration. In a letter, he noted that some of the gravestones were surrounded by already collapsing iron or wooden fences. He added that the cemetery had been surrounded with a barbed-wire fence, but that it had long since disappeared.

At the time of the earliest known survey in 1940, only 18 headstones were legible. By 1952, only 14 of the gravestones could still be read, prompting the Boulder County Commissioners to "fence the entire plot, clean up the area, re-erect the falling tombstones and grave fences, and put up some sort of plaque telling about the cemetery itself and something of the once-famous mining camp it served" (Daily Camera, 1953).

At the time of the fence's installation, a wooden plaque was installed that read: "Caribou Cemetery — This fence erected to honor the pioneers of Caribou City, 1870-1904, who buried their dead here — Boulder Historical Society — Boulder County Commissioners. 1953." 

By 1977, many of the early day gravestones were missing and only broken-off pieces at their bases indicated the locations of the graves. 

Tom Hendricks long dreamed of restoring the Caribou Cemetery. During the winter of 2022-23, Julie Annear contacted Silvia Pettem to see if she wanted to help make Tom’s dream a reality.

They met with a small group of concerned citizens to discuss preservation of the cemetery and the “Friends of Caribou Cemetery” organization was born with the intention to restore some respect and dignity to those who were buried at the Caribou Cemetery. They began to raise funds under the auspices of the Nederland Area Historical Society. 

The cemetery lies on private land currently controlled by American Clean Resources Group, formerly Grand Island Resources. Julie made the initial contact to get them on board with the restoration project. The mining company began clearing trees in 2019.

A friendly collaboration of over 40 people met on August 13, 2023, to clean up, cut, and chip a large quantity of previously fallen trees and debris. They trimmed the brush around individual graves to make them more visible. 

On September 16, 2023, volunteers installed a smooth wire fence around most of the cemetery.  Some of them returned on October 7, 2023, to install, near the entrance, a 60-foot-long metal fence, donated by Berry Trucking and Excavating. The company and volunteers also installed a gate and sign created by Jeff and Bobbi Shockey of Wild Iron Art.

Sean Kosman, a student of Dr. Lauren Hosek, University of Colorado Professor of Archeology, and a group of volunteers began mapping and taking GPS readings of the known gravesites. Then Pettem, Kosman, and the volunteers began identifying the known burial sites where the broken bases for the gravestones were located by comparing details of the bases and gravestones with all available cemetery-related photos and documents from the Carnegie Library in Boulder, the Western History collection at Denver Public Library, and additional information from families and friends on the FindAGrave website.

An iron fence that enclosed the burial site for Margaret Perkins (1879) is the only remaining fence within the cemetery. Several photographs that show her fence and her distinctive Celtic Cross shaped gravestone (now gone) in relation to several intact gravestones proved to be very useful as a reference in identifying the graves of Sara Collins and Albert Lunsford.

Sixteen of the 39 total gravesites were located, and name plaques were placed on the known graves. Only two of the original headstones and 12 broken off headstone bases remain. The two original headstones were restored and replaced by Emmitt Hoyl of the Nederland Area Historical Society.

In the summer of 2025, an impressive stone sculpture memorial to Tom Hendricks was placed outside of the cemetery gate by American Clean Resources Group, formerly Grand Island Resources. 

In both 2024 and 2025, forensic dogs located quite a few more possible unmarked gravesites.

The Nederland Area Historical Society works to preserve the history in the Nederland area. To help them do this work tax-deductible donations can be sent to The Nederland Area Historical Society, PO Box 1252, Nederland, CO, 80466.