Every Denverite knows, or should know, the story of Cheeman Park’s origins. It wasn’t the beautifully manicured weekend destination for picnics, photo shoots for special events, or a spot to see dog walkers and joggers making their way through the park, but Denver’s first cemetery.
The site was first known as Mount Prospect Cemetery, where the federal government set aside 160 acres for use as a cemetery in 1859. By 1865, 40 acres of the cemetery became Mount Calvary. The land was eventually sold to the city of Denver, and as part of the sale, it was stipulated that the land could only be used as a cemetery.
However, the city’s expansion made the Denver City Cemetery inconvenient for the new neighborhoods that were growing around it. There was a call to repurpose the land into a park as fewer and fewer people made the City Cemetery their final resting place.
Several other new cemeteries became a better option, such as Riverside Cemetery in the Globeville neighborhood, which opened in 1876, Fairmount Cemetery near 400 S. Quebe, which opened in 1890, and Catholic Cemetery Mt. Olivet, which began operation in 1892.
As plans progressed to redevelop the old City Cemetery into a park, the next of kin of those with family members buried there began relocating their loved ones to nearby cemeteries. However, what was the city to do with those who had no family or friends to arrange the burial of their remains?
The Rocky Mountain News reported on March 14, 1893, that E P. McGovern won the contract to remove the bodies from the derelict cemetery to Riverside Cemetery at $1.90 ($38 in 2025) per cadaver.
The Riverside Cemetery company is allowed $5 per digging for each grave and furnishing the ground. Once the bodies are removed, the city will turn the previous graveyard into a new park.
McGovern had been an established undertaker in Denver for more than a decade, but the events of the removal of the bodies diverged once his crew was set to the task of moving the bodies.
“The Work of Ghouls”
The truth is not only in the eye of the beholder, but also in the printed pages of newspapers. The late 19th-century American media were as divided as any other era in history, and Denver publications proved this by their differing coverage of the same story.
Case in point: On March 19, 1893, the Denver Republican, a newspaper at the time, brought to light the macabre practices going on at the Denver City Cemetery, or what would become Cheesman Park.
Several people, including undertaker E.P. McGovern, won the bid to move the bodies from the City Cemetery and re-inter them at the new Riverside Cemetery in Globeville. The Republican broke the horrid conditions of the removal process with the sensational headline: “The Work of Ghouls.” The article included news that buried bodies were torn into pieces for “plundering the public treasury.”
John D. McGilvray is one of the main villains in this tale, as the story describes how he pushed for the transfer of the unclaimed bodies at the City Cemetery to Riverside instead of what the paper described as the other option of leaving dead bodies. They cited that it was a needless expense for the city and could potentially lead to disease as the bodies were being transported to the new burial sites. The majority of the graves affected were those that had families who couldn’t afford to move the graves themselves or had no next of kin to claim the bodies.
“According to the contract between McGilvray and E. P. McGovern for the removal of the bodies, Mr. McGovern is to be paid $1.00 for each unclaimed body removed to Riverside. B. A. Harbour was to remove the headstones at $2 each, but his contract was transferred to one of Currigan’s friends. These two contracts are on file with the city clerk, but that with Riverside cemetery, in which it is through that $5 a grave is the specification, is not on file anywhere, so far as can be learned.”
As with any publicly funded project, the potential for cheating the system was afoot. The coffins used for the removal were only 3 feet by 6 inches long, which would not be able to hold a full-grown adult, so it doesn’t take much imagination to see how they would handle the bodies.
The work crew would break bodies apart and throw the remains into two, sometimes three miniature coffins.
The Republican visited the site to see the grim work unfold. A workman filled the tiny coffins and numbered each one to keep tabs on the number. At the time of this story, 491 coffins were confirmed.
“As the old City Cemetery is situated upon the crest of Capitol Hill and the soil there is remarkably dry, many of the buried ones are in a fair state of preservation. When the contract was made, everybody connected with it knew that no such body as described above could be crowded into a box only large enough to hold a baby. It was not calculated to be that way. John E. Wood, who is supervising the removal work for the Denver Health Department, must have known the same thing. But he is employed not to find it out.”
The grim description from the Republican was disturbing, to say the least. It was a politically charged article that highlighted the worst of the current administration. Underneath the political and personal attacks on the men involved in the story is the truth behind what happened to these bodies that were not resting in peace.
The Republican continued to cover the gory details of the removal of the bodies, describing workers using tiny coffins and breaking bodies in half so that McGovern could make more money since he was getting paid by each coffin re-interred at Riverside.
By the third day of coverage, the dispatches from Republican reporters forced the attention of Denver’s Mayor Platte Rogers and the city health inspector to review the progress. The paper continued to convey the “cover-up” that McGovern and his workers performed to make the site presentable.
“The line of graves at the southern fence of the cemetery, which had looked like a dumping ground on Saturday, was made to look more respectable. The mouldy and tattered cerements that were scattered around their edges in sickening confusion on Sunday had been shoveled into the open grave and covered with earth. The fragments of trampled coffins had also disappeared. Two charred patterns of prairie showed where they had been collected and burned.”
The Republican also insisted that the operation was burying empty caskets with nothing but dirt inside them.
The tour included verifying the remains in a box at Riverside Cemetery numbered “274 B. H.” “The ‘body’ in the box, for the removal and burial of which the taxpayers of Denver are being swindled out of $8.90 by John D. McGilvray and his political henchmen, turned out to be a shovel of earth and two small pieces of coffin,” The Republican wrote.
One other Perspective
While the Denver Republican continued to expose the macabre work and practices of MdGovern and his workers, the Rocky Mountain News wrote that what was happening at the old City Cemetery was a lie.
“A more uncalled-for, untruthful or brutal attack has seldom been made by the Republican on any one more than on Undertaker E. P. McGovern in regard to the manner in which the dead bodies are being removed from the city cemetery,” the Rocky Mountain News wrote on March 21, 1893.
The paper stated that the bids were open during Mayor Rogers’ absence and were conducted by Acting Mayor McGilvray, resulting in the award to the lowest bidder. The News further stated that witnesses from their paper would report that McGovern’s crew was treating the bodies with respect during the removal process.
“That the Republican should be driven to such malicious inventions displays their desperate straits for campaign materials. It is obliged to rake up dead men’s bones and found thereon a base fabrication, in the hope of being able to be belie the living. The dead at least cannot rise to throw back the falsehood, as the living have done.”
By August 1983, McGovern accepted $1,685 from the city as a compromise for the removal of the bodies his team had completed. The city also issued a notice of 20 days to all persons who have friends buried still at the old cemetery to remove the bodies before it is considered formally abandoned and the bodies plowed under.
Some estimate that there may still be 3,000 bodies buried under Cheesman Park, which leads others to believe the site is haunted to this day. The portion of the cemetery that used to be Mt. Calvary was donated back to the city and eventually converted into the Denver Botanic Gardens. Construction crews working on the park’s sprinkler systems may discover remains of unfortunate souls who still call Cheesman Park their final resting place.
