Ute Cemetery, known as Evergreen Cemetery in the 19th century, is located on Ute Avenue in Aspen, Colorado, United States. It is a small, overgrown parcel with approximately 200 burials. In 2002 it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The cemetery was established early in Aspen's history, when a visiting prospector died upon arrival from Texas. There were no formal burial grounds in the new settlement, not even yet incorporated as a city, and the land later used for the current cemetery was used for this first death in the new community. Later, even as two more formal cemeteries were established elsewhere in the city, it continued to be the burial ground for the city's poorer citizens, including some Civil War veterans, until the Great Depression in the 1930s.
After its last burials it fell unmaintained and overgrown, even as skiing and other resort industries revived Aspen's economy in the late 20th century. Trees grew amid many graves. A renovation in the early 21st century, following the listing on the Register, took account of the total graves and restored the many footpaths through the cemetery, popular with local hikers and mountain bikers, but left the wooded nature of the cemetery undisturbed. It is one of the few historic cemeteries in Colorado to have been completely restored.
Grounds
The cemetery occupies an irregularly hexagonal parcel on the north side of Ute Avenue just east of Ute Place in southeastern Aspen. A paved bike path runs between it and Ute. To the east, where the bike path turns to divide the two, is the city's small Ute Park. The Roaring Fork River is to the northeast and the residences of Ute Place to the northwest. Across Ute Avenue to the south are more residences.
Within the cemetery grounds the land is gently rolling, cresting in the west central area and at the southern corners, where the slopes of Aspen Mountain rise across the street. On the northeast the land drops toward the river. The terrain is overgrown with many native species, including not only aspens but gambel oak, serviceberry and sagebrush, and some evergreen species.
On all but the Ute Place side the cemetery's boundaries are marked by a wooden split-rail fence, with openings for some of the trails. At the main entrance, midway along the south bound, is a sandstone tablet with the names of the Civil War veterans buried within. Curving narrow paths, most of them having evolved through use rather than any formal construction, allow passage through the cemetery. A brick foundation, in very bad shape, at the northwest corner is the only remnant of what was possibly a caretaker's shed.
Approximately 175 graves have been identified at the cemetery, of which 125 are in the western half, in an apparently random pattern. In contrast, the 50 graves to the east are primarily Civil War veterans, buried in two long rows with government-issued markers, the only aspect of the cemetery indicating any planning. Among the other graves, only 25 have markers identifying the deceased. Some are surrounded by iron fences or stone walls, while others are indicated by small cobblestone coping or are just depressions in the ground.
History
In the late 1870s, shortly after Colorado became a state, prospectors began crossing the Continental Divide at Independence Pass in search of silver deposits in the Roaring Fork Valley. Many set up their tents about below the pass at the confluence of the Roaring Fork and its tributary Castle Creek, the first area they found suitable for large-scale settlement. It was called Ute City at first for the dominant local Native American tribe.
A party of prospectors came to the new settlement in 1880 from Texas. One of them, known as Colonel Kirby, had taken ill with "mountain fever" (today known as brucellosis) on the trail near Red Mountain, and died shortly after reaching the party's destination. None of the few inhabitants of the growing community had yet died, so the site of the current cemetery was chosen for the burial, land then owned by Charles Hallam, owner of the Smuggler Mine.
Kirby's body was exhumed the following year to be taken back to Texas and reburied in his family plot. In the meantime the settlement had continued to grow and taken the name Aspen from the abundance of that tree. Town officials realized that they would need a formal burying ground as it grew. They wanted to find a more outlying location than the land Kirby had been buried in, but never did. Burials thus continued on the site, known then as Evergreen Cemetery, without any management, maintenance or oversight from the city. Early wooden or stone markers often fell victim to the severe mountain winters at the cemetery's