On any summer day, Cheesman Park buzzes with joggers, picnickers, and dogs chasing frisbees. Sunlight filters through the trees, casting long shadows over the grass. It seems like any other city park, but Cheesman Park’s haunted history tells a different story. But beneath its 80 acres, thousands of forgotten bodies remain buried.
Before it was a park, this land served as Denver’s first cemetery. It also stands near the house that inspired The Changeling, making its haunted reputation even more fitting.
Mount Prospect Cemetery
In 1859, General William Larimer set aside 320 acres for a cemetery, creating Mount Prospect. At first, it seemed like a proper resting place for Denver’s early settlers. By 1863, however, it had already fallen into disrepair. Cattle roamed through burial plots. The city made no effort to maintain the graves. Wealthier families began burying their dead elsewhere.
A newspaper article from 1863 called the cemetery “a shame and a disgrace to Denver.”1The Rocky Mountain News, January 8, 1863It described the land as unfenced, overgrown, and overrun with livestock trampling graves. Some headstones had been stolen for firewood. The article criticized the cemetery’s private owners, who saw the land as an investment rather than sacred ground. They refused to sell many plots and made no effort to maintain the cemetery, waiting instead for property values to rise.
The writer urged city officials to build a fence, plant trees, and treat the land with dignity. Nothing changed. By the 1870s, families who could afford it had relocated their loved ones. The cemetery became the resting place for the impoverished, criminals, and those without families to claim them.
Jack O’Neil’s Ranch
Locals started calling it “Jack O’Neil’s Ranch” after a well-known outlaw buried there in 1860. O’Neil had been shot and killed in a Denver saloon, and his burial at Mount Prospect angered the city’s elite. It set a precedent. As wealthier families abandoned the cemetery, it became a potter’s field. Denver’s most influential residents, who had once buried their dead there, wanted nothing to do with it.
By the late 1880s, the cemetery had become an eyesore. Some graves remained tended, but most were abandoned. The land was dry, overgrown, and covered in trash. Prairie dogs tunneled through burial sites. Real estate developers, eager to claim the land, began lobbying the city to turn it into a park.
By the 1890s, Denver’s leaders were determined to erase the old cemetery, but not everyone went quietly. Mayor Londoner suddenly halted burials and demanded explanations from religious groups still using the land. The city had no intention of preserving the cemetery, but there was one problem. The Catholic Church owned part of it outright.
While most groups had leased their burial plots, Catholic leaders had secured legal ownership of their 40-acre section. The city could not force them to move the dead but could stop new burials. Officials justified their plan by arguing that no one wanted to stroll through a park filled with tombstones. It was not just about green space. It was about making death invisible.
There was just one problem. The land still belonged to the dead.
The Death of the Cemetery
Residents in Denver’s wealthiest neighborhoods did not want a rotting cemetery nearby. They wanted a park. Developers agreed. But to make it happen, the city needed a legal loophole.
Senator Henry Moore Teller had the solution. In 1890, he convinced Congress to let Denver vacate the cemetery. That same year, officials renamed the land Congress Park. The eastern half, containing many Catholic burials, was sold to the Archdiocese of Denver and became Mount Calvary Cemetery. The Chinese community, which had lived near Denver’s Hop Alley district, received ownership of their section and arranged for many bodies to be returned to China.
By 1890, developers saw Mount Prospect as prime real estate but needed money to transform it. Wealthy taxpayers proposed selling a 20-acre section in the southeast corner. The land had never been fenced, and they argued that selling it for up to $300 per lot would fund the removal of remaining graves.
The city called it a beautification project, but it was a real estate scheme from the start. Once the Catholic and Jewish cemeteries were gone, nothing would remain to protect. Even before Congress approved the change, property values skyrocketed. Turning the cemetery into a park increased the value of $1,000,000 worth of land by 50%. Denver’s elite had no problem burying the dead a second time.
By 1891, officials finalized plans to remove the burials. Bishop Matz announced that Catholic graves would move to Mount Olivet Cemetery, offering lot-for-lot exchanges to encourage families to relocate their dead. But many bodies were left behind, their resting places erased in favor of parkland.
Even with the removals, thousands of graves remained.
The Graveyard Scandal
By early 1893, the cemetery’s removal was underway, but rumors spread of negligence, greed, and outright desecration. The Denver Republican published accusations that bodies were being chopped apart, scattered, or left behind. They claimed the entire operation was a money-making scheme, benefiting the lowest bidder, E.P. McGovern.
City officials dismissed the claims. Mayor Platt Rogers called them “malicious vaporings” meant to discredit the park project. He insisted that workers handled the removals with care. But not everyone believed him.
Investigators soon found that McGovern had cut corners at every step. Coffins were made from improper materials. Required disinfectants were never used. Workers failed to clean themselves after handling remains. Most damning of all, some graves held nothing but scraps of wood. Coffins had been reburied, but the bodies were missing.
Rogers immediately fired McGovern and suspended all removals. But the damage was done.
Buried in Chaos
McGovern had spent months packing multiple remains into different coffins, knowing he was paid per coffin, not per body. Bones were scattered. Some were left behind entirely. Inspectors found at least one coffin completely empty, with only a few splinters of wood inside.
By the time city officials realized what was happening, it was too late. On March 24, 1893, Mayor Rogers fired McGovern. The city knew hundreds of graves remained, but no one wanted to fix the mess. By August, officials made it official. They paid McGovern $1,685 to drop all claims and abandoned the project.
Families had just 20 days to claim their dead. After that, the land was plowed over and left for nature to erase. By December 1894, park construction had begun. Grass was planted. Trees were added. Thousands of bodies, many in pieces, remained beneath the new landscape.
A Park Built Over Graves
By the time Cheesman Park was completed, an estimated 3,000 bodies remained buried beneath it. Some believe the city ignored them, preferring to leave the dead undisturbed. In 1927, residents demanded action, calling the old cemetery a neglected wasteland. Headstones had been overturned. Graves had been vandalized. In some places, bones had surfaced. The city had tried to erase the burial ground, but the dead refused to be forgotten.
Strange occurrences began almost immediately. As workers removed bodies, nearby residents reported hearing footsteps pacing their hallways. Doors creaked open on their own. Some even saw ghostly figures standing by their bedsides. Visitors describe an overwhelming sense of sadness or dread, ans if unseen eyes are watching from the trees. Others claim to see shadowy figures at dusk, flickering between the trees before vanishing.
Some report something stranger. On moonlit nights, when conditions are just right, people say they see faint outlines of long-gone headstones, ghostly markers of the graves below.
Cheesman Park may be one of Denver’s most beautiful green spaces, but it is a beauty built on bones. And the dead, it seems, have never truly left.
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[…] Shadows From Beyond the Grave: The Ghost Lore of Cheesman Park Published: October 18, 2019 […]
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