Pauper’s Cemetery in Colorado Springs

Pauper’s Cemetery, Colorado Springs

This little plot of land was designated for 7 bodies that were found buried when road construction for 21st Street was happening in 1957.

A poor farm was nearby that burned down in January 20, 1900 and also used by a smallpox hospital that was demolished at some point. Records burned in the fire and are forever lost. Many old cemeteries and hospitals have what are known as Pauper’s Fields, this one was unmarked and used by the poor farm. According to reports, anyone who passed from small pox in El Paso County was buried nearby. Regardless of wealth.

These were fields are all over the world. Pauper’s or sometimes called Potter’s feild. Public health funerals are another name for this. They are where indigent, unclaimed and unknown people were buried, also victims of disease. This could be simply those that couldn’t afford to claim thier passed family, traveler’s and more. Rarely did they get stones to mark the graves.

Poor farms and institutions that housed the ill, didn’t always have the resources to deal with the number of deaths happenening and would bury them at times in mass. Many times this was the entire quarantined family, that left no one to take care of the ones that passed. Records were likely not kept as well on these sections either, if at all.

A cemetery report online states that “One of the unmarked graves here might belong to Henry Parks, who lived on the farm until November of 1900, when he died after an epileptic seizure at the age of 46.”

Rest easy lost souls.