Harvesting Historical Riches

Aspen Resurrects Historic Cemetery

On Sunday, January 25, Aspen’s locals bid farewell to the eighth annual Winter X Games.  The five-day event, which showcased extreme skiing, snowboarding, snowmobiling, and “Moto X” jumping (picture a tricked-out motorcycle on snow), represented Aspen’s latest attempt to reinvent itself.  In interviews with local news reporters, Aspen Skiing Company executives admitted that they view the X Games as a perfect opportunity to (forgive the pun) turn over a new leaf.  Young, unpretentious athletes and spectators—featured live on ESPN—would help bring the resort’s aloof, upper-crust image down to earth.

The resort’s public relations strategy parallels the City of Aspen’s ongoing commitment to historic preservation.  Historic mining shacks, humble homes, and in particular, a working-class cemetery, tell visitors that behind Aspen’s fast and famous image is a real town with a real past, built by ordinary people.

Visitors to the Ute Cemetery will not find the names of mine owners, lawyers, or prominent businessmen etched into the granite and marble gravestones.  Pioneers established the burial ground in 1880 out of necessity when a prospector died on his way to the Roaring Fork Valley.  During the following six decades, it grew in an informal way as working-class people buried deceased family members or friends.  Project contractor Ron Sladek points out that many of the people interred there were Aspen residents “who lived without fame or fortune [and] served in modest roles during the early days of Aspen’s history….  Many of them were single men who died in this alpine frontier while helping to build one of the country’s newest mining districts.”

In contrast to the well-planned cemeteries established for Aspen’s elite, Ute Cemetery is laid out in a haphazard manner without neat rows of headstones, manicured lawns, or maintained carriage paths.  An exception to the disarray can be found on a hill southeast of the cemetery’s center.  Thirty-seven gravestones, arranged in two precisely aligned rows, mark the final resting places of Civil War veterans who had come west in search of opportunity.  The precise arrangement evokes a military parade or battle formation.

Encouraged by local Elks Lodge 224, the city of Aspen began to assess the condition of the cemetery and its markers within the last several years.  Sladek researched all 175 gravesites, seventy-five of which retain a gravestone or monument.  The remaining sites were either unmarked, or had their gravestones stolen.  Most of the cemetery, which had not been maintained since 1940, had become overgrown and some of the markers had been vandalized.  Recognizing the cemetery’s historical significance, the city developed a preservation plan to rehabilitate the site, make it accessible to the public, and honor those buried there.

Aspen’s city council, parks department, and historic preservation program have committed themselves to carrying out the preservation plan.  The city received a $100,000 State Historical Fund grant to create interpretive markers, rehabilitate damaged gravestones and gravesites, and selectively remove vegetation around the graves.  Norman’s Memorials from Fort Collins did the stone conservation work, while landscape architects from BHA Design took care of the excess vegetation, put up appropriate fencing around the cemetery’s perimeter, and developed a trail to lead visitors to specific locations where tasteful, unintrusive etched granite markers interpret the cemetery’s history.  A dedicated corps of volunteers, including members of Elks Lodge 224, donated time, expertise, and labor to the collaborative effort.

This project received wide support from the Aspen residents.  U.S. Ski Team physiologist Riggs Klika spoke for many of them in a letter addressed to Amy Guthrie, city’s historic preservation officer.  “The reason I particularly support a project to restore the cemetery is that the people [Civil War veterans and others] buried in that site fought for freedom and created a national treasure, Aspen, Colorado.”  The letter, dated just eighteen days after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, demonstrated why we can never allow ourselves to neglect or forget our past.

BY BEN FOGELBERG, Editor